It's been a while since my last entry, but I have a good excuse - Carnaval happened. There was little time to sit in front of a computer, editing my photos and trying to turn my thoughts and experiences into words. Now that it's over, I've finally had the time to take a (quick) breather, while I wait at the airport in Rio de Janeiro.

After Quito, I spent an entire day enduring a ridiculous flight itinerary (Quito to Bogotá, Bogotá to Panama City, Panama City to São Paulo), to then fly the next morning to Belo Horizonte. It was all worth it of course, to return to the place where I made an amazing last year friend in Maria. She invited me to stay with her for Carnaval, where we could once again party it up with her and her friends.

Walking back into her apartment, where I spent over a week back in April last year, it felt like I was returning home. That feeling was helped by the fact that Maria had sent me a key to her apartment back when I was in Recife, so it really did feel like I was opening the door of my own house. I was able to unpack my bag completely, and have my own bedroom and shower. We had home cooked meals, my laundry was done for me and we spent a fair bit of time on the couch watching Netflix. After 11 months of travelling out of two small bags, a break from the traditional backpacking experience was exactly what I needed.

We partied for days on end, then took a few days off to recover, where we ate a lot of Japanese food, watched TV shows, went to the cinema and even adopted an abandoned puppy for Maria on the day I left.

Just as I had expected, it was another special experience with some great friends, and the return to Belo Horizonte only cemented our plans to catch up again somewhere in the world in the near future. I had plans to fly to Sao Paulo for 2 nights after Belo Horizonte, but decided to stay in Belo Horizonte for a couple more nights to recover from a bug I still seem to be shaking off (to be fair the heavy partying didn't help).

Nevertheless my time in Belo with Maria came to an end, and I spent the following 2 nights back in Rio de Janeiro, I place I just can't seem to bypass when I'm nearby. It's such an incredibly picturesque city. Whether it's due to it's beauty, the fact that it was Carnaval, or maybe just because the amount of special memories I have in this city, it always has a unique feeling which to me brings a lot of happiness.

Unfortunately, I only had one full day to enjoy Rio, and being a Saturday during Carnaval, it was impossible to do the one thing I really wanted to do - hang gliding over the city. But, it makes for a good excuse to return again one day. I met up with Lydia, who works in a hostel I stayed at last time I was in Rio, and we walked around the city, eating and drinking our way around Ipanema, Leblon, Copacabana. We finished the day enjoying the sunset on Ipanema beach, then went for dinner at one of my favourite Brazilian restaurants, Fogo de Chão.

We ate way more than anyone should have in one sitting, but the meats are too delicious to say no to, until you've actually reached the point of being in pain from eating so much. Hopefully, the rest in Belo Horizonte and the amount of food I ate in Rio will give me the energy for the last leg of the trip - Chile, and one other surprise destination... stay tuned!

Staying at one of - No, THE worst hostel I’ve ever stayed at in my life - somehow still didn’t spoil a memorable time in Rio de Janeiro.

I had booked a 5 night stay at the Rio Nature Hostel with Daniela, a girl I met in Porto Alegre (I first talked about her during my stay in Curitiba here). From the pictures on Booking.com, it looked like a pleasant hostel perched high up a giant rock face in Botafogo.

Long story short - it was horrible. The toilet was constantly blocked, the bathroom rarely cleaned, the water was always cold and they didn’t have any towels to rent. The staff were rarely present and if they were, very unhelpful. But I won’t go on any more about the hostel. Daniela and I had an amazing time over the Easter long weekend, and sampled some of Rio’s best coffee, food and sights.

We both arrived Thursday evening, and took a walk to the Humaitá district to have dinner at Pizza Park. The food was alright, however the location was quite nice - sitting down in a packed gastronomic area outside, we had a nice view of Christ the Redeemer perched atop Corcovado mountain.

On Saturday we ventured into Centro and stopped at the famous Confeitaria Colombo for some coffee and cake. At night, we had some drinks looking across Ipanema beach, then had an amazing dinner at Giuseppe’s Grill. This place came highly recommended from a local and we weren’t disappointed.

A weekend in Rio wouldn’t be right without a day at the beach, so on Sunday morning we sat under an umbrella at Copacabana beach and took in the beautiful weather - and got burned. In the afternoon we picked up some chocolate for Easter and watched a movie (Rio - how fitting!) at the hostel.

On Monday we went for breakfast at Terzetto Café. Somehow it was my first experience eating a papaya and it was amazing. We stopped at Shopping Leblon for some lunch, then had another superb dinner at Tragga in Botafogo.

Unfortunately, the weekend had come to an end and I had to say goodbye to Dani. On top of that, the weather was horrible and we had to run to the bank to get some money to pay for our stay at the hostel. We got out of there as quickly as we could, then had a nice breakfast a few blocks away at Le Dépanneur.

The last thing on my to-do list in Rio was to take a tour of the Maracanã, then take a trek up Pedra Bonita for this view of Rio de Janeiro: