Hello again from sweaty Paraty! We are now officially the hottest we have ever been - am having fond flashbacks of freezing England! Its a really nice town, but sooooo hot! Apparently it was 38 degrees yesterday, and it must be about 100% humidity. We have to have all the windows and doors closed to prevent the bugs that are feasting upon us from getting in, so hardly slept a wink last night, although that may also have been partly due to the slightly stra...

Finally - we're proper travellers! We've actually moved from one destination to another, that wasn't part of the scheduled ticket! We're feeling terribly brave..... It all started when we decided to venture out to a Carnaval rehearsal at the Sambodrome, which is basically just a 700m long paved road with big bleachers at each side. We knew it was going on and thought it would be a good way of getting an idea what Carnaval was like without the hassle of th...

It has been a very exciting weekend here in Rio de Janeiro! Yesterday (Saturday) we did the sightseeing tour, and it was absolutely fantastic. We'd decided to take a guided tour for reasons of safety (and maybe a little bit of laziness) and it was really worth the money. We had an excellent guide called Vao who did the tour in both English and Spanish, so best of both worlds for me! He took us to the Cathedral, the big football stadium and the Sambodrome, as ...

PS. I forgot to mention that I haven't quite worked out how I'm going to get my own photos on to this site, so for now you'll just have to make do with the standard ones! I promise you though, it really does look this amazing!

Hello Folks, and welcome to Rio de Janeiro! We arrived here at about lunchtime on wednesday, via a 3 hour delay and a new plane at Heathrow, and a quick stopover in Sao Paulo. Decided to get a taxi into the city cos you do hear some pretty suspect things about buses in this city! Its an amazing drive in from the airport - you go through miles and miles of favelas, houses built higgeldy-piggeldy all over, including rather precariously up steep hillsides. T...