+++++++ Maracana Special +++++++ Sunday March 16th should by rights have been part of Ed & Kat's celebrity blog so apologies are due. However some experiences deserve closer examination and on the day in question we paid a visit to the heart of Brazilian football and one of the truly legendary football stadiums of the world, the Maracana. A week previously we had spotted an innocuous bowl shaped structure from a mountain and been intrigued. We managed to a...

"Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking"…you guessed it; we are in Rio de Janeiro! And you have probably already gone to the end to see what's happened to the articulate humor of your British friend and his comically funny wife.They'll be back but first this is Kat and Doc providing a "celebrity blog" as Rob calls it. We met R and A at our Ipanema apartment and after our tearful but happy hellos realized t...

Arriving at Rio Surf n' Stay for our 5 days of surfing lessons, Antony and I had great expectations of turning pro afterwards.We have had lessons before, how hard could it be?Surely a highly organized surf camp would provide us the discipline and technique to stand on most any wave presented to us.Think again! And organized surf camp is first and foremost an oxymoron of the greatest kind.From the moment we arrived we knew that we would have to get adjusted to 's...

OK this will be a chirpy blog - honest - but the darkness has to be explained before the dawn has any significance. A few of you may have noticed a hint of negativity in the previous blogs from South America, more from me than Rachelle. To be frank I did not enjoy the first week in the continent, it was a struggle to even go out for a drink. Even in the bright sunlight Brazil seemed grey and uninteresting clouded by my discomfort and irritation. Jetlag was the in...

We really over estimated how much we could do in Brazil with limited time.Once we left Rio, we had two weeks before we had to be back and in that time we wanted to see three places: the Pantanal, Salvador da Bahia, and Ouro Preto (which is fairly close to Rio).Three places in two weeks seemed reasonable until the distances were put into the equation and it was clear that traveling from Rio to the Bolivian border and then going all the way to the Atlantic coast an...