Paraty Peril

This is a typical street in Paraty. Though billed as a quaintly cobbled picturesque town, that's actually cobblers. In reality the roads are paved with gigantic boulders. Pasage is not easy in the rain, wearing flip-flops or after a few of these:

A Caipirinha is a delicious muddle of sugarcane rum, fresh lime, crushed ice and lots of sugar. Drinking one is much like consuming the tastiest fizzy pop of your life. All is well and good until the next morning when you wake up with a mouth as dry as a Muslim wedding and having broken a limb due to the treacherous paving conditions. There doesn't seem to be an existing litigation culture in Brazil. No doubt someone will start one up before long.

Pukka Paraty

This is photographic evidence that the sun finally made an appearance while we were in Paraty. Be assured that no Photoshop was deployed in the making of these. It doesn't exist here.

Nice beach, isn't it?

Terrific Tiles...

The children think the man on the left is awesome because he makes hats and bowls out of palm leaves. Good, eh? Not as cool as the man on the right. He decorated tiles as colourful sunset scenes using only some paint, his fingers and his tongue. The results were very impressive. So much so that Matty wished he'd put off tiling his bathroom with boring white and blue ones before we left.

Ilha Grande Jungle Hut...

Or Pousada, as it's known in Brazil. Nice isn't it? This is where we sat night after night, cowering from the rain, smoking fags and watching little lizards, mega snails and normal sized monkeys. That thing on the pillar is a hammock. We couldn't use it though because that too was soaking wet.

Camouflage Cenicero

My smoker friends at home, I was going to bring you back an ashtray, but as you can see, it wouldn't have fitted in my bag.

The contents of our backpacks

When we took the boat from Rio to Ilha Grande all of these things got completely piss wet on account of the torrential downpour. Having been tossed about on a tempestuous sea for the best part of 2 hours we were just relieved to still have our lives (and our breakfasts). But the rain fell on the jungle for days and nothing got any less wet. Everything in this picture wa soaked for nearly a week and smelled like eau de wet dog. Now, in Uruguay and having finally laundered all our threads, the sensation is something else. The flies have lost interest in circling us and the damp doggies no longer take us for their own. Despite our current luxury, the perrenial problem remains - how can one make five pairs of pants last three weeks?

English people are like Liliputians in Ilha Grande...

in comparison with the giant snails and this massive aqueduct, one of literally a handful of things to see on the island, apart from the beaches. Doesn´t Matty look like a tiny little ant... or is he just far away?

Shell Shock in Ilha Grande

After Rio we went to a beautiful jungle island in Brazil called Ilha Grande. The scale of the rainfall was directly proportional to the size of this monster snail. I mean, look at him! Matty and I had never seen the like of it before. To stay here one needs to be accepting of all the `nature´. On day two I was delighted to find a tiny snake that had wriggled his way to the bottom of my coffee cup. At first I thought he was coffee grounds but closer inspection made me almost heave. If this is Brazil´s answer to the worm in the Tequila shot, I won´t be following the local customs. When in Rome my arse. In the garden of our little jungle pousada we have managed to spot some little monkeys high up in the trees. Although far away, they appeared to be of a relatively standard size. Imagine my relief when I was assured that not all animals around here have bizarre measurements.

Breakfast in Brazil

Before I came to Rio, I thought that my flatmate Holly ´Hot Legs´ Howe was the only person in the whole World to eat cake for brekkers. Upon sampling a number of breakfasts around Brazil I now know that it is in fact a staple of a balanced morning meal, along with ham, cheese and very strong coffee. So Holly, this one´s for you. It turns out you´re not as much of a freak as I once imagined...

Samba in a Shower

One of our prevalent memories of Rio, and indeed Brazil generally, remain the indefatigable rainfalls. But Rio people don´t let a bit of water get the better of them. Instead they brighten the mood with uplifting Samba and Bossa music. Outside. In the rain. This show took place in front of a bookshop one Sunday evening and was the perfect remedy for dampened spirits. The non self- conscious among the audience were dancing and singing along (not us, obviously, although there was a tapping of toes), and everyone had a total blast.

Gratuitous Graffitti Shot

This is me feeling up a nice bit of street art totty near Ipanema beach. Shortly after this picture was taken, the rozzers took me in for sexual harrassment, but I was released when the painting said she didn´t want to press charges.

Heezoos H Christo

We went to visit Jesus, and Christ did it take forever. We qeued to buy a ticket for the little train. We waited for two hours till it was our turn to get on the little train. Then we qeued to get on the train, and waited to take the pictures... you get the idea. Anyway, it was worth the wait because the Saviour Statue is Super. There were lots of people having their picture taken with arms outstretched in emulation of Jesus Himself. Matty and I didn´t do this because we didn´t want to look like complete twats.

Where´s the party in Santa Teresa?

We schlepped around for hours in the heat searching for the ´bustling´ centre of Santa Teresa. Needless to say, by that point we would have happily traded one another to a street hawker for a cold cerveja. This is what the town´s ostensible hub looked like when we got there:

Imagine our chagrin as reality dawned that our uphill struggle had brought us to a place with a tram but no beer. About to lose hope and rueing the people who write The Rough Guide To South America, we almost headed back from whence we came in despair. Then a sudden and voracious determination gripped us to seek out the party (and the drink) so we carried on exploring.

Fortunately for us, the Fun Fairy had waved her magic wand up the road a while, and a miraculous Samba party was just getting going.

It was only 5.30 ish, but people were already up and dancing to the Samba band. This gazebo was set up next to an amazing colonial mansion that housed a bookshop and bar (Yes! A bar!).

About an hour after this photo was taken it was virtually impossible to traverse the throngs of revellers, which had to be done in order to get to the bogs. Speaking of which, did you know that you´re not allowed to thow bog roll in the loo in most of South America? I find the very idea of keeping your used boggers in the bathroom bin most unsavoury. I digress.

Capoeira dancers gathered inside the house to wow inflexible tourists with their incredible shapes.

Completely awesome it all was.

After quite a number of local cervejas and more fags than I care to mention, it was time to leave the party. The table on the left with the blue table cloth is the one we had just vacated. Lovely, isn´t it?

It was a terrible shame to leave because the party was still going strong, but we hadn´t eaten all day, so more booze would have been very naughty indeed.

We went on to a restaurant that gives you a little disk akin to a coaster that´s red on one side and green on the other. If you want to scoff some delicious meat, you have to turn the coaster to green. Then the most remarkable thing happens. A man with a big skewer of juicy steak comes running over and carves some onto your plate. Yum! If you need a break from the boef, it´s a matter of flipping your coaster over to red. Now I´ve seen it all. I can´t remember the name of the restaurant, but have since referred to it as ´the runny-meat-man-place´. The food was obviously more appetising than the lazy nomenclature suggests...

Tiley Steps in Lapa

Behold! The steps of tiled tremendousness! En route to Santa Teresa, a supposedly arty bit of Rio, we chanced upon these wonderful tiled steps. Matt, having recently retiled his bathroom, appreciated the amount of hassle that must have gone into grouting all this lot. We´re glad they bothered because Lapa is pretty stinky and grey generally. Always nice to have a splash of colour, don´t you think? Not sure why, but had a peculiar hankering for a beer after admiring one tile in particular... who says advertising doesn´t work?

´ow much? Seven and an árf?

No, Matty hasn´t gone off Guinness. This was his reaction after discovering his pint had cost him 18 Reals (just North of seven quid). No matter, we enjoyed an evening of a nice Brazilian man with a guitar singing such traditional classics as the Pink Floyd and Guns ´n´ Roses back catologues. He also played the popular tune ´The Girl from Ipanema´, which we thought spoiled the authenticity of our musical experience somewhat. A kilo restaurant we went to that night offered its punters Listerine in the bogs, a useful aid to alleviating the bitter taste in Matthew´s mouth after the Guinness debacle.

Surf ´n´ Turf

There were lots of surfers between Ipanema and Copacobana beaches. This we believe was on account of the ´gnarly waves´.

Behold! Above, the dudes with their boards, as pictured on the right. Totally awethome!

The Mutt´s Nuts

This is Yungi (on the right), one of our three canine comrades at the Rio Dolphin. I chose my t shirt to coordinate with his fur. Little did we know, this was to be our first encounter with Brazilian dogs of MANY. There is ostensibly some kind of hound epidemic, evidenced most strongly on the beaches of Ihla Grande and Paraty, where they run amok like nobody´s business.
I promised the travel clinic nurse that I wouldn´t go near any animals while in South America. This has proved beyond impossible. Sorry Nursey!
Where there are dogs there are also doggie do dos. Matty has already fallen foul (hilarious pun) of the dreaded poo, with only a sandal to protect against foot-to-toot contact. Inevitably,´Turd Watch´has become an essential, not to say fun past time whilst traversing some of the more dimly-lit walkways.

Rio digs: The Rio Dolphin Inn

This is the place we stayed for our first two nights in Ipanema. It was a tremendously quirqy little gaff, with many items of surf, sea and dolphin paraphernalia, collected by the proprietors, cluttering every nook and vestibule. The down side was that there was no running water for the first day, so we had to use buckets to wash ourselves, and to flush the bog.
´´Welcome to Brazil´´ our host John sagely remarked.

Ipanema: The Blackpool of Brazil

True Brits abroad, we insisted on ´enjoying´ the beach, despite the fact that Mr Sun did not have his hat on. Matthew fortunately left his head handkerchief and white socks at home.

The bad news is, we forgot the corkscrew...

The good news is we made it to Rio. This is a photo of me on Ipanema beach. You probably won´t recognise it as it´s usually pictured against a backdrop of bright sunshine and blue skies. As I´m uploading this picture, it looks as if there is a beach volleyball in the air on the left-hand side. Then I noticed that the volleyball is in fact a splodge of mayonnaise that another hostel resident had left me as an afternoon snack. Yum.
Despite the constant rain, Our experiences of Rio have been awesome. We were astonished to find that after 3 days and four nights in the Brazilian danger zone we had escaped unscathed. It´s like London really, only wetter and the people are nicer.