After São Paolo, we stopped in a pretty little town on the coast of Brazil called Paraty. The colonial buildings were whitewashed with brightly coloured doors and window frames which, coupled with the blazing sunshine, meant that the town itself was photo-worthy (or, it would be if our photography skills were better). As the sun was shining, we spent most of our three days alternating between wandering the cobbled streets and sitting on the beach with a cold drink. This was our first proper taste of the beachbum lifestyle and, to be honest, we got used to it, a LOT quicker than we thought we would!

Three days whizzed by and before we knew it, we were boarding a bus to Rio de Janeiro. Luckily for us, a friend of Tom’s from Bristol was in the city at the same time with a couple of her friends, so we made plans to meet up the next day.

Friday morning was an earlier start for us. We met Char, Alex and Rich at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain bright and early, ready to catch the cable car up. The views across the city were beautiful and we stayed there for a couple of hours, desperately looking for marmosets. Afterwards, we visited Parque Lage to explore the gardens and buy some lunch. We had planned to visit Christ the Redeemer that afternoon, but unfortunately for us, the entire city was shrouded in clouds and being hammered by heavy rain so we postponed that plan and instead spent the remainder of the day in a bar. We eventually braved the weather to find a Brazilian churrasco where we horrified the waiter with the quantity of food we ordered. Two bottles of wine, three different cuts of steak, some pork, chicken, various sausages, rice, chips, salad and farofa later, we surrendered to the fact we would not be finishing our meal and headed home to suffer our self-induced food comas.

This did have a slight effect on our plans for Saturday and we decided that the morning would be best spent organising flights and accommodation for Colombia. Late afternoon, though, we pulled ourselves together to head over to the Airbnb where the others were staying to glitter up before experiencing a bloco, a street parade which turns into an all-night street party. Soaking up the atmosphere, we immersed ourselves in the fun with a couple of cans of beer and gin and tonic.

Sunday night was what we had really been waiting for: the samba parade. The Sambadrome was across town so we took the metro to avoid the ongoing blocos, which we rapidly realised were just a five day never-ending party. At the Sambadrome, we found some space in the stands and made ourselves at home. While we knew that the samba parade were various samba schools competing against each other, we hadn’t realised the scale of it. Each school had an hour to travel from one end of the Sambadrome to the other – a distance of 700 metres. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people performing for each school in various sections. The first group would come through which would set the tone for the rest of the hour. For example, the second school we saw (which we all agreed was our favourite) started with a small group of dancers with a highly choreographed routine, followed by a gold float which contained a deep pool with glass sides. In this pool was a mermaid who entertained the crowds while being driven along. I promptly realised I’d made a huge error in choosing my current career.

The floats were all huge and so intricate, as were the costumes of the dancers. While there were a handful of dancers in the teeny tiny bikinis and feathers,many of them were in huge hooped confections with large headwear which meant that some groups (often of around 50-100ish people) were restricted to swaying and spinning. The music would be one song which would repeat for the hour, enabling the dancers to maintain their rhythm. After having seen four or five schools, two of whom had gone for the same, or very similar, religious themes, we decided we’d seen enough and arrived back at our respective homes around 4am.

For the last three days, we visited Lapa to see the brightly tiled stairs, the Christ the Redeemer statue and the beach. Being Carnaval week, many businesses were closed, including museums, and travel was much harder due to roads being closed for the street parties. The weather was also quite temperamental, varying between hot and bright, heavy downpours and thunderstorms, however, we loved Rio and would absolutely love to go back!