I came to Rio on the 18th, a week before my placement as a volunteer started especially to come for the Carnival here. It’s held before Lent every year since 1723 and is considered the biggest carnival in the world! So it was not going to be missed, no matter how much my mother worried about my safety and craziness let loose into this wild city. Nobody can really come fully prepared for carnival. The party just never stops and I arrived in the midst of the madness! Once a couple of us had awoken from my first night, we head off to the legendary Impanema Beach. It took a metro ride to get there, but oh no, not any ordinary metro trip one expects. This one was jam packed with bodies covered in all sorts ... read more

They say it’s the journey not the destination that is the real adventure or something like that. But I beg to differ. I hadn’t even got through passport control at OR International Airport when they sent me off to the main office with my passport. It turns out I had been in the country illegally for 49 days because my study permit had run out for South Africa. So I leave the city of gold with a huge fine in my hand, so long Johannesburg! Arriving in Sau Paulo airport, I waited for hours for my bag to turn up, and then my next mission was to find where on earth in this strange place my connecting flight to Rio took off. After some games of charades and flashing of my ticket, I found the counter, ... read more