Cidade Nova

And so to our last stop on the longest of long holidays, to Brazil and Rio de Janeiro. If we wanted sun and beaches, we absolutely got it. And curiously enough the mirror image of our arrival in Istanbul 3 months earlier: this time 3 hours behind instead of ahead, we mark the end of a leg and our return to London with an impacted wisdom tooth and emergency surgery.

The moderately terrifying surgery was over in 5 minutes flat on our first morning in Rio, and we stocked up on half a pharmacy's worth of medication, only to go back for the other half the next day when Elli came down with tonsilitis.

It's not what you'd plan but since when has this trip been about the plan? Once we had the energy we wandered up and down Copacabana beach and spent a couple of days frying in the heat, eating mostly ice cream and açai, and mercifully it wasn't too long before we graduated to beer and shrimp bobo. The beer is cheap and plentiful, the stew is solid but has cemented our view that South American food unless you are into large slabs of meat is not really much worth yelling about, but the views are always pleasant, especially in Rio, and the general pre-carnival atmosphere is slightly mad all the time so it makes for good people watching and plentiful options to listen to bossa nova on the beach.

We were pleased to find that Rio does do a very strong all you can eat sushi, and later on, a delightfully novel (albeit slightly expensive) pay-by-the-kilo buffet, so all things considered it hasn't been a bad week of eating.

We couldn't go to Rio without seeing the Big Statue of Jesus, so off up the mountain we went to add yet another instalment to our list of monuments we have seen in the fog. We spent a couple of hours watching clouds pass over which is a new meditative hobby that South America has bestowed upon us, and finally saw all the hills of Rio in all their lumpy glory - it really is an amazingly green and hillocky city.

Elli struggled for several days to buy tickets to see the football and once she had managed to get them out of sheer bloody mindedness and thanks to insane Brazilian disorganisation we went to see Flamengo vs Marica at the Maracaña. If Brazilian football is an institution, this was the dress rehearsal, with only half the crowd present, but we still got something of the effect. A 5-0 result did at least mean a lot of enthusiastic goal celebrations even if no great surprises re: the outcome!

All in all we made it to the end of the week mildly battle scarred, a little sunburnt, and really now very ready to go home, which is probably about time.Read more