Way back in our early dating days- when she still saw me as a dashing Indiana Jones type and she was only a part time Princess- DH agreed to follow me into the Amazon river system presumably in the hopes that I might get all buffed and wrestle an Anaconda for her. After finding a guide whose only English came from song titles, picking up a dugout canoe with a minimum number of leaks, portaging through the grimiest oil town ever, and surviving a gunfight at a jung...

We found last minute accommodation in Rio for Carnival which is almost unheard of. We also found relatively slow transportation back to North America which would help us avoid at least four weeks of a frozen Canadian winter. And in a nice twist, our hotel and transport was the same thing- the Maasdam cruise ship. As our 'hotel' pulled out of the Rio harbour, we were almost accidentally trying out travel-by-cruise-ship which was a big change from our recen...

So we went to London to get a Brazilian visa so we could see Carnival in Rio. We went to Portugal in order to grab an affordable flight to Brazil so we could see Carnival in Rio. We spent a few days in Salvador so we could catch a reliable commuter flight to see Carnival in Rio. We booked a 26 day cruise so we had the 3 days of accommodation needed to see Carnival in Rio. I'm not sure we’ve ever gone to this much trouble to catch one of the more renowne...

With a relatively urgent need to get home (Revenue Canada is not impressed by our world travels) running up against a very understandable desire to avoid as much of a Canadian winter as possible, we looked for a big WOW to wind up the first stage of our world travels as slowly as possible. Flying from Portugal to Toronto via Brazil (not exactly a straight line) seemed to be an appropriate plan especially for that WOW. Carnival in Rio has been on my bucket list fo...