Day 2 of the Carnaval. We thought we'd go into central Rio and do some museums. When we exited Carioca Metro station we bumped into a band led parade down Av Rio Branca. This was the site of the previous day's partying in the street with 2.2m in attendance! It was a bit like the morning afterwards and folk struggled to raise a dance and a beer but soon found them doing both to the Samba rhythm! We wandered into the Banco de Brasilia - cool marbled halls where a...

We have moved north along Ipanema Beach to the Hotel Mercure for Carnival. This hotel is more in to the party goers. We spent most of yesterday on the beach under an umbrella in a chair - yes I (P) even managed to break one! I swam at 8am and 6pm - and with all the times in between - was v refreshing!! You can drink a lot of beer without thinking about it in the hot and well supplied beach environment! Quite a few colourful characters on the street last night -...

Today's the day we move to another hotel in Ipanema. This next one is not so close to the beach but with Carnaval starting tomorrow, accommodation is harder to come by than ever. Talking of accommodation, we've heard this morning that the flat we were hoping to get has fallen through which is a pain but may be a blessing in disguise as the landlady was a very odd character. So we're back to square one.... Since the last blog I've partaken in a couple of social ...

Today's the day I discovered a rich seam of Heriot-Watt IPE graduates. It started when someone in the lift to BG's office said "Hello Patrick". It was Umberto Borges who is a drilling manager with Petrobas and has an office 7 floors above ours! Later on I discovered Stuart Kennedy, Nigel Robertson and Mark Laurie ( one geo, one PE and one REM) all together in the same team! I now know of 10 alumni and rising. Our flat-to-be (contract arrived today) has a party ...

Not sure how many UK papers featured pictures of Ipanema beach under a sea of umbrellas at the weekend (thanks Gwil!) but today's photo shows the same beach looking slightly less busy.. It certainly was crowded - and very hot - on both saturday and sunday & we retreated indoors after a few hours. It's also very noisy with a constant stream of vendors shouting their wares. One nice feature of staying so close to the beach is that Patrick can go down for a ...