From Iguazu Falls, I took a 24 hour bus to Rio. Keen to get some beach time under my belt before the carnaval, I just changed buses at the terminal and kept on going, 3 hours further down the coast to Isla Grande. For the next week I lazed around, soaking up the sun and walking a bit, late nights and early starts due to the sun hitting my tent at 6am every day. Portugese was a mystery at first , but after a while I was happily conversing to the locals in Spanish whilst they replied in Portugese, with us both kind of understanding the other. Back in Rio, I finally managed to get my hands on a FatBoySlim ticket which I?d been failing to do for the previous week, and enjoyed the electronica knees-up til after dawn. Then packed in a trip to Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, sugar loaf mountain and the Maracana stadium (capacity apparently 205000) for a thrilling 3-3 result between Botafogo and Flamengo (we were with Botafogo just because our hostal was located in that area..)  Finally stayed in a favela with an ex-BBC correspondent who´d decided to make this his home - a fantastic view over the bay being the main bonus.

Unable to stomach more buses for now, I flew from Rio to Salvador in the north a few days before carnaval, mid Feb (the bus was apparently 34 hours).  Staying on a campsite next to the beach about half an hour from town did wonders for my budget, as the city centre rooms were like gold dust in both availability and price.  The scene was set for the next 6 days of little sleep and lots of CAR-NA-VAL.  I heard that the Salvador experience was more involved than Rio, more possibilities of mingling and dancing in the streets rather than watching the procession go by.  And more roots-y, african-influenced and drum-based music (the citys population  is 80% black).  My 1st nights experience set the scene for the rest; torrential rain which would drown our own beloved Glastonbury festival completely; being efficiently frisked of anything left in my pockets by opportunistic pickpockets; enjoying the spectacle of the huge passing 2 storey trucks loaded with singers, dancers and above all, speakers; being ´pipoca´ (popcorn) standing on the roadside with a Skol beer or caipirinha; and heading back in a crowded bus of exhausted drunken revellers at 3.30am every morning for the return journey to the campsite.        

The Brazilians certainly know how to party, in my opinion more than any other nation - and in my role as the reserved Englishman, I could only stand back and watch the frolics, the muscled tattooed macho men trying to take full advantage of any of the sassy, skimpily-clad girls who let their guards down.  Finally the Europeans got a chance to demonstrate their own particular style of cutting loose when (again) FatBoySlim commandeered his own Bloco.  The cost of the tshirt allowing you under the rope behind the bands truck was up to 200 quid! Or you can just stand outside the roped area and watch for nothing...  In my case, I tried and failed to secure a legal tshirt one of the local salsa-reggae (?) groups, but then managed to pick one up on the black market for a fraction of the price.

Partied out, I passed a quiet few days of contemplation in a National Park close to Salvador, where the cashoeira de fumaca (smoke falls) at 350m is reputedly the highest in Brazil.  Then flew to Manaus (with my first and hopefully last aborted landing in Brasilia due to high winds), and visited a quiet village nearby where you can swim with pink dolphins. The jungle tours here are pricey, so I waited until Peru for that, and instead boarded a packed boat for the journey up the Amazon - initially 6 days to the Peruvian border.  A diet of rice, beans, chicken or beef meat was served twice a day, and after the first night I found a surpisingly comfortable hammock position by the gangway rails - reading, playing chess with my new Ecuadorian travelling companion, and eating being my primary pastimes, although marathon card sessions and heavy drinking were also popular.   Finally, completely with the rhythm of the jungle and the river, we were back in Peru.