South America

  • About Sao Paulo

    Sao Paulo is 3 times the size of Paris, and the official estimates for the population of Sao Paulo are between 18-24 million – the error margin is bigger than the whole population of Finland!!  It´s a crazy, busy, polluted, and at times quite a depressing place to visit. On the way from Paraty (the last 1.5…

  • 34 in Sao Paolo

    Good morning, thanks for all the birthday wishes, I can report that although I suffered some big city angst on entering this mega city, we went out last night with most of our group (some Taxi comedy resulted in a third of the group being lost) and drank what turned out to be very strong…

  • Paraty

    What a change of pace! Rio was brilliant fun, but I just love this sleepy little town, full of great cafes, bars, shops and beautiful old Colonial buildings. We arrived yesterday at noon after a 4.5 hour coach journey (the coaches here are very comfy, not like the horrible contraptions we get in Europe and…

  • Farewell to Rio

    Well sadly it was time to get going from the incredible city that is Rio de Janeiro (thats Hio de Janeiro). I have seen few cities that are set in such spectacular natural surroundings – the mountains, the sea, the fantastic public beaches beaches, Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf mountain, cool Samba parties on hot Sunday…

  • That beach

    Starting from Renata´s flat we started walking around the lagoon (Lagua) to get to the Ipanema beach. Lots of brasileiro´s were jogging and cycling past us, it was a real shame we forgot our running shoes in London… Ipanema beach was as wonderful as I´d always imagined, with beautiful white sands, blue seas and tall,…

  • River of January

    We finally arrived in Rio de Janeiro (which means River of January in Portuguese) on Saturday evening as  – to our surprise – did our luggage, which Iberia was unwilling (unable?) to hand back to us on Friday when we were stranded in Madrid. The customer service agent assured it would be checked in for…

  • Si si si, hehehehe

    Yes, disappointing but sh*t happens! I think we may have to get used to the Latino style of “doing” things…nobody at the airport seemed to know exactly what we should do or where we should go, I even suspect that at least two of the airport staff has no actual clue as to where they were in…

  • Wet planes

    Courtesy of Iberia airlines, we´re spending the night in Madrid after missing our connection from Madrid to Rio today. Our flight, for which we had to get up at 04:30 – somewhat painful after a few (too many) leaving drinks last night – was late leaving Heathrow because the plane was “wet”. Yes, that´s right,…