We began our 6 day stay in Rio with a talk from our guide, Hanna, introducing us to Carnival. The origins of carnival date back to the ancient Greek spring festival in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine. The Romans adopted the celebration with Bacchanalia (feasts in honour of Bacchus, their own god of wine) and slaves and their masters would swap clothes in a day of drunken revelry. Carnival is a massive celebration of indulgences - one last gasp of music, food and alcohol in the days before Lent - 40 days of abstinence, but proceeded by a week filled with virtually every known sin. This set the tone for the next few crazy days and nights….

Our trip began with a 6.45am start to go and visit Christ the Redeemer. Everyone wants to be in Rio to experience Carnival and there were 5 cruise ships due in that day, all of whom needed to be bussed round the major sites and our tour leader wanted us to get there before they descended. The statue of Christ which watches over Rio from the top of the Corcovado Mountain is one of Rio's most well-known sites and it was definitely worth the alarm call to see it before the masses arrived. The statue is 38 metres high and done in an Art Deco style - I didn't think you could 'do' Jesus in Art Deco style but up close we could see why it is described in that way. We managed to get a good few photos trying to emulate Jesus' pose (though Jon said I looked more like I was shrugging) and spent a good half hour admiring the views across Rio before the stickered up, clipboard led tourists arrived and we made a sharp exit.

That night we had tickets to a football game so Jon was super excited at the thought of seeing his favourite sport in the country that is arguably now the home of modern football. The game was part of the Rio state championship which takes place during Carnival, and in our pre tour bumph is described as 'fiercely fought out' between the major teams in Rio. The two teams playing were Boa Vista, 'one of Rio's smaller teams', and Vasco da Gama, 'one of Brazil's best supported clubs'. Unfortunately most of those supporters seemed to be more interested in partying at Carnival and didn't bother turning up for the match, which was not the semi-final advertised, but a meaningless group stage games between teams that had already qualified for the next round. We started to think something was amiss when we arrived at the Stadium an hour or so before kick-off and there was no one around. Literally no one. Then we were given our tickets which had a face value of 10 rials (£4). We had been charged £75 extra for the football trip. When we made it into the ground and the team lists were read out and most starting players' numbers began with 40-something we were fairly sure we had been ripped off. The announcement that there were 3020 people in a ground that holds 25,000 people just confirmed it really. Poor Jon.

Sunday was the big day - our trip to the Sambadrome for the full Carnival experience. We started the day with a 'historical samba tour' which seemed to involve us doing a drive by of Samba City where the samba schools that participate in the Sambadrome competition are based. From the outside it looks like any other factory. From the inside… well I don't know as we just drive past it. But it is where the magic is made. As we continued on our bus journey through Rio's sights we saw floats that we being dismantled by the teams of 'recyclers' that you see out in all South American cities. It turns out after the parade is over the schools just scrap everything. All costumes, floats, everything that hundreds of people have spent thousands of hours over the last year creating, all by hand, are just considered waste. There is obviously limited interest in second hand carnival floats so they are just dumped on the side of the road by the Sambadrome exit. There is more of a market in second hand costumes and some entrepreneurial Brazilians were selling parts of them at the side of the road, but we couldn't believe that all that hard work is just dumped. They obviously aren't sentimental about these things.

The cost of the tickets for the Sambadrome is prohibitively expensive for most Brazilians so in recent years there has been a resurgence of 'Blocos' during carnival - free for all street parties, often with Samba bands and singers appearing on a sound stage that take place across Rio. We went to a bloco in the historic district of Rio for an hour or so to get us in the mood for partying that evening (just as an aside, when did 'partying' become a verb? Is it even a verb outside of North America??). Thousands of people dressed up in an amazing array of costumes had headed into the centre of Rio for a couple of hours of dancing and having a good time. The square was absolutely packed full of revellers and locals selling cans of beer (and Smirnoff ice - very important for a non-beer drinker like myself), dancing around and generally enjoying themselves. We went to a few Blocos during Carnival in the centre of town, Ipanema and Lapa which is on the north of the centre (and involved 10 of the people in our group trying desperately to get a minibus across town, wandering down Copacabana beach yelling 'Lapa, lapa' at passing traffic before all squeezing into a minibus like a 3D human version of Tetris) - at each of them we were amazed at how good natured the celebrations were. In the whole of Carnival we only saw one or two incidents of absolute drunkenness or aggression. In London, Notting Hill can't even manage a couple of nights without news reports of huge numbers of arrests and fighting. The difference between the English and South American way I suppose…

We loaded up on food at a traditional Brazilian all you can eat BBQ in anticipation for the evenings events at the Sambadrome. The Sambadrome is a permanent structure just outside the centre of Rio. It was built in 1984 to provide a home for the annual carnival samba parade, with 700 metre stretch of a street converted with bleacher seating for nearly 100,000 people. The competition itself is surrounded by a number of formalities - each school has up to 85 minutes to pass through the length of the entire Sambadrome, or time penalties are enforced. There are also minimum numbers of whirling ladies that need to participate, and penalties for significant gaps between each section, or 'wave' of the school.

Each school is scored on a range of criteria including its samba song (which they sing for the whole 85 minutes of the parade), floats and props, costumes and 'flow and spirit' of the display. Winners are announced on Ash Wednesday and the school that scores the least is relegated from the Special division down to division A.

On the Sunday night we saw seven of the thirteen 'Special league' schools, with the final school not entering the Sambadrome until gone 5am. Each school selects a theme for their parade - many of these are about events in Brazil's history, or famous writers or artists so some of the subtleties were lost on us. However one school this year based their whole theme on 'The importance of dairy products in our diet, including yoghurt and its variations in ancient civilisations'… we thought maybe something had been lost in translation but alas no - after receiving a rather large donation from a yoghurt company the school of Porto de Pedra managed to base 33 'wings' of dancers and 7 floats on yoghurt. Highlights included dancers showing how "the clergy held the secret of yoghurt preparation and its use as means to attract new followers to the Christian church", a tribute to "Isaac Carasso: founder of the first yoghurt factory in Barcelona", and a huge cheese float (sadly not made of cheese). Entertaining and educational…

Other schools seemed to obtain more independent forms of funding their parades and stuck to more of the traditional themes. Ranascer opened with a tribute to Romero Britto (a Brazillian painter), Portela upped the ante with a more rousing song, and a tribute to Bahia singer Clara Nunes. Imperatriz and its tribute to another painter, Jorge Amado, came on just before midnight, and were followed by Mociadade, my personal favourite of the evening. Great song and incredible percussion section who were dressed with cones on their head in all colours of the rainbow and who moved and danced as a block. After the tribute to dairy, the favourites for the evening, and last years' winners, Beija Flor. This school takes the competition very seriously…they had significantly more people participating in the wings and each wing moved in perfect harmony - they made most things that have gone before look amateur… But my favourite remained Mocidade with its drummers - after all, no one wants to support the Man United of Samba schools. When the final results were announced it seemed that Monday night was luckier - only Portela and the ultra-competitive Beija Flor made it in the top six and were invited back for the Champions Parade.

At 5.30am, after 6 of the 7 schools had performed I'm afraid we admitted defeat and headed back to Copacabana for breakfast and then bed for a few hours sleep with the sound of the samba drums ringing in our ears. It's impossible to describe the electric atmosphere, the noise and the sights at a night at the Sambadrome, but it's another high point of the trip that we'll look back on forever thinking, yup, we were there.

The next day we had a trip to Sugar Loaf Mountain to look forward to, unfortunately scheduled for only 5 hours after we arrived back to the hotel. It was also the hottest day in Rio so far and I ended up with a sunburnt head. Double ouch. To get to the top of Sugar Loaf, you have to change cable car on a smaller mountain, and the views from both across Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, as well as the favelas that form the Rio skyline are spectacular. For some reason there is a jewellery store on the top of sugar loaf, as though it would inspire you to buy an overpriced silver necklace. I blame the cruise ships again.

The unexpected highlight in Rio for us was a trip to the favelas to see a community project supported by our tour company. Favelas, which are basically unstructured and unplanned housing, have been around in Rio since the end of the 19th century but grew significantly in the 1970s when there was an exodus of people moving from the Brazilian countryside to Rio and other major cities looking for work. Many of the Rio favelas are unsteadily perched on the edge of the mountains and hills that should act as natural boundaries for the city. Tourist trips to favelas have increased in popularity in recent years with some unscrupulous tour operators offering the chance to have your picture taken with drug dealers holding their sub machine guns, but we were here to see a project that had made a significant difference to the life in one particular favela.

Project Morrinho (http://www.morrinho.com/Morrinho/Projeto_Morrinho___Uma_Pequena_Revolucao.html ) based in Favela Periera da Silva began in 1998 when a group of boys decided to build a model of their favela from bricks and other building materials. A well-known Brazilian film maker was making a documentary on the favelas and came across them playing with their model. He left them with a video camera and asked them to film their 'games' which were based on stories and people in the favela itself. The resulting documentary became famous in Brazil and as a result the 'boys' were asked to recreate their model first in Brazil, and then in art festivals in Europe and across the globe. The original model still exists and is maintained by the original boys and younger children within the favela. In order to be allowed to play at the favela the children need to attend school and can't misbehave. If they do, they aren't allowed into the project for a couple of weeks. The project also makes some really funny short films based on life in the community which can be found on you tube, and has a video editing suite which they use to make films for the community (e.g. wedding videos).

Because favelas are unplanned and unsupported communities they became crime hotspots and often dominated by the cocaine gangs who were so prevalent in Rio of the last couple of decades. On going disputes with the police meant in some favelas the murder rate rose as high as 40 people in every 100,000 (to put in context, London had a murder rate of 1.9 per 100,000 last year). However in preparation for Rio hosting the Olympics in 2014 and the World Cup in 2016 the police have changed tactics and have embarked on a campaign to repacify the favelas. Instead of heavily armed raids, the police now monitor the activity of the drug gangs and identify exactly who they need to arrest. They then give notice to the residents as to when raids will take place, and after the raids open local police and government offices to begin the process of taking over the favelas. They might not initially arrest all of the people they are looking for, but the idea is that the community will begin to trust the authorities, and switch allegiances to them rather than the criminal gangs. The repacification process is generally seen as a positive thing -instead of violent gun fights between the police and drug lords, which often end up causing injury or worse to innocent people who live in the area - the authorities are now reclaiming the favelas and putting in place the much needed support systems and facilities for the law abiding residents. For some though, the way the police are going about the repacification is still using excessive violence and displacing residents.

As a result of Project Morrinho, and the example that the 'boys' set to the community, the Pererira da Silva favela has not been identified as one that needs to be repacified. The 'boys' are an example that going to school, a bit of talent and creativity and a lot of hard work is enough to change your life for the better. It was really fascinating to see a bit of the 'real' Rio, and understand first-hand how this group of men have changed their lives and the lives of their community.

In contrast to the Rio reality check of that afternoon, we spent our last big night in Rio was spent at the most decadent and fantastical event of carnival, the Gay Ball - you can imagine how much Jon was looking forward to that one. Historically masked balls are a big part of Carnival, the tradition being strongest amongst the upper classes who imported it from Venice. The Gay Ball is the most extravagant of all the formal balls, with a red carpet televised entrance for revellers, and attracts (despite its name) a varied crowd of tourists, transsexuals and general flamboyant characters. We hung around the red carpet for a while before going in, amazed by the display of Brazil's best plastic surgery being paraded before us. The ball itself was actually in an underground nightclub and had a bizarre token based system of buying drinks. Although we didn't make it to the end of the night we got to see the samba band from Unidos da Tijuca who eventually won the Samba School competition. Unfortunately samba isn't the kind of thing you can just jig along to so we called it a night at about 3am and left the dance floor to those with rhythm.

We were initially apprehensive about being in a group again after three months of travelling on our own but Carnival is really something that needs to be experienced with other people, otherwise it's like being at a great wedding or party where you don't know anyone. Everyone in the 23 strong group was lovely and a much wider range of ages and backgrounds than we had expected. The tour ended with a trip around 'colonial Rio' which took in the amazing Escadari Selaron (a beautiful art project started by a Chilean artist living in Lapa who has tiled many of the 250 steps outside his house) and a modernist cathedral which looks a cross between the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool and an alien spaceship. We ended with a boat cruise around Guanabara Bay which was a really nice way to say goodbye to the people we had met. Sharing the Carnival experiences over the last few days meant there was an extremely warm and convivial atmosphere - well it was either that or the free flowing (and free in cost) Caipirinhas that did the trick. It's not quite the end of our time in South America but it definitely feels like we are ending on a high. I am worried about how I will deal with the inevitable post-trip slump after this one…