Bryce Canyon 4

Bryce Canyon 3

Bryce Canyon 2

Bryce Canyon 1

Even better than the Grand Canyon!

Canyon to the left of them, canyon to the right of them...

So we both had completely the wrong mental picture of the Grand Canyon - something like a steep U shape, red and deep with a bit of river in the middle.

I have revised my mental picture. It's now a huge tub of ice cream, and someone's taken lots of scoops out, but they haven't really touched the sides, and they've taken most scoops from the centre. It's beautiful, but a little less dramatic than I'd expected - partly because you start at the top, and getting down to the bottom is quite a mission* so you see it mostly from above.

* You are very strongly advised not to hike all the way down to the river and back in a day. It's hard to tell what your range is, because coming back up is a lot harder than going down, and probably hotter.

We went to the South Rim - the less popular North Rim is just a mile away, but the canyon extends so far that it's a 5 hour drive! So you won't be doing both in a day. There's a visitor centre and national park which is the obvious point to head for.

Flagstaff is quite a way away, so we got up early with the intention of taking one of the trails into the canyon and back by noon, which we just about managed. We took the South Kaibab trail as far as Cedar Ridge, a 3 mile trip described as difficult but not really too bad on a sunny but not baking May morning. I wouldn't have fancied it later in the day, though. The trail switchbacks down and eventually reaches a spine out into the valley with good views in all directions. We made it back safely for lunch in the cafe - plan ahead, by the way, a sign makes it clear that there are no guns allowed in the cafe.

Back up top, it's very easy to get sucked into taking the free shuttle buses along the central 13km section, jumping on and off for various viewpoints, and we spent a while doing this, with an occasional walk along the rim. It's not bad, but the view doesn't change that much from point to point. Eventually we got back in our car and drove along Desert View Drive to the east. This is a c30km stretch (I think) with less frequent viewpoints, which means that the view does change, and is probably better than it was at the central area.

 We stopped at a few and eventually sat down to wait for sunset at Lipan Point. This looks a really good spot for it - we felt justified when a National Geographic guide brought his tour party here for sunset - and sunset had looked pretty good the day before. Sadly, although the pre-sunset light itself was good, the sunset itself was nothing to write home about (not that that usually stops me).

We have three more national parks scheduled this week so it'll be interesting to see how the GC stacks up...

Monument Valley 5

About to set off on my horse ride through the valley. In a gen-u-ine
Stetson!

Monument Valley 4

Hollywood is everywhere in the USA!

Monument Valley 3

View from John Ford lookout.

Monument Valley 2

Monument Valley 1

Americanarama

Road trip time - L.A. to the Gramd Canyon. We could take the motorway to Vegas, and another one from there - but that would be boring. So instead we decided to drive along Route 66. Which doesn't really exist anymore.

Route 66 was the US highway that ran from Chicago to LA, made famous in song and in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. But over the last few decades, a crumbling road through small towns has been superseded by new highways to get you where you're going as quickly as possible. Stretches of the old road have been subsumed into others and renumbered. Route 66 is now a collection of bits and bobs of road, as near as can be identified. In places there are signs on the side of the road, or even painted on the tarmac, to let you know that 66 once ran there.

In LA, 'Route 66' is actually streets famous in their own right, following parts of Santa Monica Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard. California doesn't make great play of the road, and in some ways it is not particularly interesting - outside LA it runs mostly parallel to the modern interstate and the railroad (amazing long freight trains pulled by 3-5 locomotives), so you're driving more slowly along a worse road surface than on the new road and seeing mostly the same things. But the scenery itself is very nice - the Mojave desert is greener and more mountainous than you expect a desert to be - and occasionally you run past a very small town (like Amboy, home to Roy's Café, which from the outside at least looks just like it should), or adverts painted onto the side of unused vehicles, or abandoned buildings.

We stayed the night in Barstow - Lilly pulled us off the road when she saw signs for an outlet mall, and that was us done for the day. The modern face of Americana. I learned that if you find a sale section in an outlet store, it is ridiculously cheap, and Lilly was actually outshopped by me. Which is a bad idea. There will be retribution. There always is. I foresee a lot more shops in our future...

Barstow is not a big place, but is a popular overnight stop due to its location. We picked a motel from the side of the road - Motel 66, it had a nice neon sign and a bit of quirkiness, and Lilly expected us to be murdered in our beds but amazingly we weren't. Barstow's other point of interest is a strange McDonald's, in a building that also houses souvenir shops and radio stations, and you can eat in old train carriages fixed to the sides of the building.

On into Arizona, and immediately the road changes into a better-maintained snake coiling around hillsides and past a working goldmine, and eventually, slowly, to Oatman, which you will picture if you think of an old frontier town, now dedicated to selling tat to tourists. Makes for a few fun photos though, and the road gets better after here. This is the longest surviving stretch of the old highway. Unfortunately it's not the most interesting, for either scenery or roadside attractions. But we do see occasional tumbleweeds for the first time in our lives. They resolutely refuse to appear when I tell jokes.

Through Seligman, with more photogenic roadside attractions;Kingman, where we just get into its Route 66 Museum before closing time (turns out 10 minutes is enough) and stop off at the Quality Inn to see the unadvertised memorabilia on display in its lobby; and one last stop for dinner in Williams, at Cruisers Cafe 66, a classic auto-themed diner with its own micro-brewery - hard to imagine a place more in keeping with want you want from 66.

We then pushed on to Flagstaff for two nights, and a day at the Grand Canyon in between (which I'll report on separately). Flagstaff is probably the biggest town we'll see for a week, which isn't saying much - basically, you can tell you're in a big town when it has more than one street. It has a little historical centre which is quite pleasant. We had dinner in Granny's Cabin, which used to be the proud owner of two giant lumberjack statues until it donated them to the local university*, and granny still makes the apple pies.**

* There are a lot of uni sports teams photos on the walls, and on one of them three tiers of sportsmen are towered over by a lumberjack. The effect is good enough to make me wish that all sports team photos were posed in front of giant lumberjacks.

** We didn't have one. We had already reach our fruit pie quota for the day at lunch, 'the best pie on the river'.

The last chunk of Route 66 for us came on Saturday, through Twin Arrows and its presumably more modern neighbour Two Guns, and on to Meteor Crater, with its own radio station (disappointingly just a pre-recorded 3-minute loop), where we stopped to see the visitor centre. The crater is 550 ft deep and 2.4 miles in circumference and looks very impressive in photos - slightly less so in person because it's hard to get a sense of scale. To help with this, they have put a 6-foot cardboard cut-out astronaut at the bottom - but you can't really make it out with the naked eye so I'm not sure it helps. The guided tour around part of the rim is quite interesting (you can't go into the crater). NASA trained Apollo astronauts here from 1964 to 1972. The guide to the violence of the impact is that anything that isn't red rock was thrown up from hundreds of feet underground - so the sandstone rocks the size of a house on the rim are quite impressive. The crater stands in a vast swathe of flatness almost as far as the eye can see, barring the odd mountain on the horizon, so perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that up on the rim (150 ft above the plain) they frequently get 100+ mph winds. Not today - it's calm and baking hot. I wouldn't like to be here in August.

Now, if we had to name one song that we've heard again and again around the world, it would be The Eagles' 'Take It Easy', which features the line "Standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona". There doesn't seem to be much left of Winslow, but there is a dedicated corner complete with sign, statue and painted backdrop, and two of the three shops in town are dedicated to appropriate souvenirs.

Next up is the Jackrabbit Trading Post, whose sign - 'Here it is' - is (they clearly hope) iconic - they've printed it on enough T-shirts in their shop to clothe most of Arizona, which looks to me a touch optimistic.

Finally, we pass through Holbrook, home to a motel with concrete teepees and to many a dinosaur model. Just up the road is the 'painted desert' and petrified forest, and everybody wants to sell you some rock, i.e. petrified wood. Um... I'm okay, thanks.

A really enjoyable few days of driving (apart from the half hour we somehow spent driving in a giant circle in LA because it's hard to get decent directions driving 66 eastbound). We've notched up 925 miles on and around Route 66 and I kind of wish we were doing the whole thing. Maybe another time.

GC: Sunset

GC: Just before sunset

GC: Colorado River

GC: View from the rim

Grand Canyon: View from Cedar Ridge Hike

Route 66

Lilly's Highlight's & Recommendations # 27 (Los Angeles, USA)

My favourite city in the world! Shopping, celebrities, TV, movies,
stand up, innumerable bars, restaurants and clubs and even some
culture. What's not to love?

We have been to LA before so this Top 5 doesn't include some of the
obvious stuff like the Hollywood sign, the Kodak theatre (Oscarland),
the Griffith Observatory etc. which are all brilliant too. Ask me for
details if you like.....

1. Shopping - a shopper's paradise! Especially if you like buying
stuff that is hard to get in Europe so you can be smug! And even with
the exchange rate it is still a reasonably priced place to shop. My
favourite shopping streets were Melrose and Robertson (great boutiques
- Kitson, Tokidoki, Bathing Ape etc). I even managed to track down the
Lady Gaga MAC lipstick which I have been seeking in cities all over
the world! It goes without saying that the Malls are great too -
brilliant end of Spring sales - especially Macy's. In summary LA is
still the best place to buy brand in the world!

2. Shows - there is always something to see in LA. We saw 3 shows and
1 film in 5 days (got very drunk with an ex-work colleague who was
passing through on the other day!)

- Stand Up at Meltdown (comic shop on Sunset): a spontaneous decision
to attend this stand up night while in the queue in the shop did not
let us down. A couple of recognisible faces but every spot pretty
funny (I particularly liked the opener who introduced us to Hulk
Hogan's mid-90s music album!) Comedy really is alive and kicking in LA.

- Infant Sorrow feat. Russell Brand at The Roxy on Sunset - having
been abandoned to my fate by Paul (who can't stand Russell Brand) I
was a bit nervous about this show, but ended up having a great time.
Russell was funny (of course!) and the music provided by the real
musicians behind the fake band Infant Sorrow was good. There were
guest appearances from Jonah Hill and Judd Apatow (in case you haven't
worked it out yet the evening was basically a big publicity stunt for
the new Apatow movie starring Brand and Hill called 'Get Him to the
Greek') and I easily made friends with some friendly Los Angelenos.
Even made it to the after party at Chateau Marmont and it all felt
very LA. Awesome!

- EvelynEvelyn feat. Amanda Palmer at The Coronet: after seeing AFP in
Sydney and having listened to her solo album 'Who killed Amanda
Palmer' (shameless plug) about a 100 times on this trip I was pretty
excited when Paul surprised me with another AFP gig. It didn't
disappoint. The EvelynEvelyn section of the evening was suitably
insane (Google it, it really defies explanation!) and the second half
saw some great solo stuff from AFP. Another great night out. Thanks,
Paul!

- 'The Father of my Children' at Westside Landmark Cinema: we took
this in after a rave review from my Dad, but unfortunately it didn't
do anything for either of us (sorry, Dad!). It kills off the most
charismatic character after 40mins and nothing else happens thereafter.

3. Universal Studios - part theme park part largest film and TV studio
in the world this is a top day out. The studio part of the day is
covered by a bus tour around the stages and sets. They try and pep
this up by having some live action and effects bits (eg. Jaws jumping
out at you or Norman Bates emerging from Bates motel with a knife) but
I was happy enough with the sets and stages themselves. I mean, who
wouldn't be excited about seeing Wisteria Lane from Desperate
Housewives? You also get to see the original Psycho house, the Little
Europe and Wild West sets that have been used for hundreds of movies
(it's amazing how many times they reuse the sets, some are nearly 50
years old, and I never did notice that Buffy lived in the same house
as the Munsters and one of the Desperate Housewives) and many more.
Very exciting for anyone who likes movies.

The rides are decent too especially The Simpsons one which is a funny
and exciting sim ride (Jurassic Park and The Mummy are ok too). The
best stuff there though is the 3D or live action experiences. I
enjoyed Shrek 4D, Terminator 2:3D and the laughable but entertaining
Waterworld show. My most lasting memory will be the House of Horrors
though. Universal have a long history of horror films from
Frankenstein to Dracula to Jason to Freddie Kruger (the new one) and
the basic premise is that these characters will intermittently jump
out at you in the dark. There is nothing new in that but I can't cope
with horror at the best of times and one particularly well timed jump
(I don't know by which character, I have blanked it out!) nearly made
me fall over. I also particularly hated the room where you had to push
your way through corpses strung up on meat hooks. What with that and
the T-Rex in the JP ride I may never be the same again! As you can see
though it was a unique and fun day out.

4. Huntingdon Library/Getty Center - 2 separate big budget culture
centers in LA. The Huntingdon has amazing gardens (Japanese, Chinese,
Rose) and a fabulous collection of Gainsborough's and Van Dyck's to
equal any I have seen in one place in the UK. It also has a world
class library and a permanent exhibition of some first editions (or at
least very old) world changing books such as the Gutenberg bible,
King James Bible, Leviathan, Vesalius' book on anatomy etc. Very much
worth a trip (especially since you can also drive there via a
diversion on the famous Mulholland Drive. We did this last time we
were in LA but it is worth a repeat.)

The Getty Center (not to confused with the Getty Villa which is in a
different location) has beautiful views from a lovely Richard Meier
building on a hill. The Renaissance is well represented and it has a
few good Impressionist pieces (a couple of lovely Degas). The setting
and architecture were my favourite parts though.

5. Museum of Tolerance - housed in The Simon Wiesenthal Center it is
disappointingly thin on the stories behind the 'Nazi Hunter's' most
famous catches. What it does have though is a very good high-concept
Holocaust exhibition. The basic concept is that you are guided through
the history of the holocaust via a voice over narrative which follows
you through the exhibit using video, stills and physical props to
illustrate the narrative. The narrative is simple to avoid information
overload and for that reason isn't going to tell you anything new but
would be perfectly suited to introducing surly GCSE history students.
Considering the emotive nature of the subject matter it also manages
to (mostly) avoid hysteria and cliche although as it is museum with an
educational agenda rather than a memorial it doesn't manage it
completely. It's most emotional moment is the point when you walk into
a replica gas chamber to listen to survivor stories. The stories are
always sad and often horrendous but being in the chamber is the most
unsettling bit. I couldn't wait to leave! Another interesting feature
of the museum is that they have brought Wiesenthal's office over piece
by piece as a memorial which is accompanied by an interesting film on
him (disapointing lack of a biography in the bookshop though). Overall
a very well done museum.

A quick mention for the Ray Harryhausen and Chuck Jones exhibitions
that we saw at the Academy (the admin office for the Oscars as opposed
to the Kodak which is where the ceremony is held) which were well
done, comprehensive and free!

In summary - I <3 LA!

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 26 (Cusco/Machu Picchu, Peru)

I had written 80% of a Cusco/Machu Picchu top 5 before my iPhone ate
it, so here is a very belated and truncated summary!

Go to Cusco! The old town of Cusco deserves to be a destination in
itself (not just a base for MP). It is a beautifully preserved legacy
of the Conquistadors with more beautiful streets and buildings than I
could count.

There are plenty of things to do around Cusco too...

1. Interesting but not breathtaking Inka ruins within walking (or
local bus) distance from Cusco:

Tambomachay - a pretty but simple waterfall with a mystery water source.

Puka Pukara - remains of an old fort.

Saqsayhany - more remains of an old fort. Location of a famous Inka
battle.

Q'enqo - remains of an old temple. Distinguishing features include
alters for sacrifices and an area where people were mummified and
buried.

There is also a small scale version of Rio's Christ the Redeemer
(Cristo Blanco) which is very budget in comparison!

2. The Sacred Valley. Absolutely amazing collection of Inka ruins. We
hired a car + driver and went to all these places (in descending order
of brilliance!):

Pisac - viewed from a distance is best. A perfectly preserved fort/
village on a hill. A mini MP.

Maras - pre-Inkan salt mines. Salt water flows out of the rocks and is
caught in small pools carved in the moutainside. Salt is still
harvested (do you harvest salt?) from this area and the mountain is
coated with it. An amazing sight.

Ollantaytambo - a very steep and impressive temple complex complete
with throne positioned perfectly to catch the first rays of sun
everyday. The best example of Inka religious construction we saw.

Moray - this looks like a crop circle at first but it is actually a
series of concentric circular terraces which the Inkas used for
agricultural experiments. Very impressive.

Chinchero - well preseved agricultural terraces in a tiny but nice
historic town.

3. Then there is MP itself. You don't need to take a trek there but
our sense of achievement when we arrived there at dawn after 2 days of
cycling (67km!), walking (23km!) and whitewater rafting (unknown
distance, unknown how we survived! Quite different to the safe version
in New Zealand!) definitely added to the experience. Expect to book
anywhere up to 2 years in advance for the traditional 4 day Inka trail.

MP itself certainly lives up to the hype. Especially from a distance.
The view from the Guard House (especially if the cloud rolls in - see
photos) is breathtaking and the view from Waynapicchu mountain is
worth the (big) effort (2 hour round trip, steep in parts) although
the view is quite distant. Up close it reminded me of a very well
organised English medieval castle/village complex (although the Inkas
did have a few decades on their medieval counterparts so they didn't
do too badly!). The only slightly disappointing thing is the lack of
ornamentation. It is no Angkor Wat from that point of view. Still,
well worth suffering the altitude! (Really, have a few days in Cusco
to acclimatise.)

Other things I loved about Peru:

- Food - lots of new experiences like Inka Cola (tastes like Irn Bru),
coca mate (tea that was popular with the Inkas due to its energy
giving properties and famous for putting the 'coke' in coca cola) and
lots of different types of rice and corn puffs which I loved (beats
crisps). Lots of quinoa dishes too which was perfect for me. Super
cheap too.

- Chullo woolly hats - a symbol of Peru and very cute! Lots of
different colours, wools and styles (different styles for different
regions apparently). I will be rocking mine come winter in England!

Although I'm sure that Cusco/MP are not at all representative of Peru
as a whole (the small villages we passed through on our travels were
very poor and the 2 days without water in our hostel told us something
about the infrastructure!) but they are wonderful places (and people -
so smiley!) and I totally recommend it. Favourite place in
S. America alongside Buenos Aires.

Really Wanna Be In LA

LA is a late addition to our itinerary (basically necessitated by available flights) and the only place on our trip that we've both been to before* - 3 nights during our honeymoon. We were planning a short stopover but we always seem to get stuck in big cities for longer than planned. And be too busy to blog.

* Lilly has been to Dubai before; everywhere else is new to both of us.

LA is famously a place where you need a car. We quickly found that to be true three years ago when we stayed out in Venice Beach, but slightly less so this time - we're staying in West Hollywood and there's a fair bit of fun to be had within a reasonable footprint, much of which we have dutifully tramped since arriving on Thursday morning* - notable quirky shops on Melrose and Sunset and the Farmer's Market and brand new Grove Mall on Fairfax, and a bit of culture too.

* Incidentally, for all the bad rep that US Immigration gets, especially in LA and NY, we breezed through it as usual and the staff were much friendlier than their UK counterparts. Lots of extra security when boarding in Lima, though.

On Sunday we hired a car to venture further afield. LA is a very driveable city outside rush hour - the roads are straight and wide, the use of lanes is excellent. The downside is that because everyone drives, there is nothing for the predestrian - you can walk miles without seeing a convenience store. It's eerily low-rise, apart from the small downtown business area - whenever you see a four-storey building it looks huge. But LA has grown on me a bit - I'm enjoying it more than I did last time. Lilly loves it, of course.

"Why didn't we do this last time we were here?" she asked as we set off for Universal Studios. There's a bus ride around a lot of famous TV and movie sets and the occasional set piece thrown in - one poor guy's job is to play Norman Bates from Psycho every time a bus goes past, putting a body in a car and then walking menacingly with a knife. Can't say it did much for me, but it is a bit interesting to see how sets are reused - the same street has been used for The Munsters, Buffy and Desperate Housewives, for example.

Then there's a theme park - the highlight is Waterworld, a terrible film I've never seen condensed into a 15-minute camped-up live-action version where the villain gets all the bad lines and Kevin Costner's character runs around sayung nothing. Genuinely fun, and introduces a theme: pretty much every ride and show wants to get you wet to some degree. A new Simpsons ride has a long wait but is as funny as you could hope for from the current state of the show. And there's an old semi-live-action follow-up to Terminator 2 which tickled me - a big guy who looks nothing like Arnie runs around the stage, lip-syncing to Arnie's dialogue, and in a corner of a screen behind him is a close-up of Arnie so you can tell what he should look like. Not the governor of a bankrupt state, that's for sure. Don't come here expecting great rollercoasters, but there's enough variety in the rides and shows (a new Shrek short, a half-hearted Blues Brothers show, short Mummy and Jurassic Park rides) to be just about worth coming. Of course, the best thing about going on rollercoasters with Lilly is seeing the photo at the end, where she usually has her eyes shut and an expression of terror (and I look bored). Jurassic Park the movie terrified her at a formative age, so the photo of the JP ride is a new high watermark. I really should have bought it...

On the way back we had a quick browse in Amoeba, possibly the biggest record store I've ever seen, and then randomly ended up at a stand-up comedy show in the back room of a comic book store (Meltdown). It was surprisingly very good, with a couple of 'names' (a woman that Lilly recognised from the film Knocked Up, and one of the stars of the TV show Parks And Recreation, which you won't have heard of but is 'from the makers of' The Office - the US version... Anyway, we've seen him on TV. I guess there must be thousands of stand-ups in LA but all the guys we saw were decent to very good.)

LA is also very good for museums, and on Saturday we messed up going to MOCA - we went to a small annex of it and just saw a few photos of Vegas.

Then we took in a couple of exhibitions at the home of the Academy - one on animator Chuck Jones and one on stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, both good little shows. We followed this with LACMA, which was mostly closed last time we were here. Slightly marred be some over-officious staff ("If it is capable of taking photographs, it must not be out.") and one waste-of-a-lot-of-space very large 'sculpture'; but some fun stuff, and it has a Japanese pavilion with a decent display of Hiroshige ukiyo-e that was always going to earn points from me.

Two more good museums: the Huntington Library (Monday), a proper mansion with its late owner's art collection is impressive enough, and the grounds match it (lots of themed gardens - wish we'd made more time here, the roses were good, the Japanese garden was nice, and we only had a glimpse of the fantastic Chinese garden); and the Getty Center, a set of modern buildings perched on a hill (accessed by its own tramway) for great views, beautifully designed to show off a cornucopia of all kinds of art - some of the rooms are designed to be like a lush mansion, others are ultra-modern and let in natural light - plus some making-ofs, the only drawback being that it's a bit of a maze.

We went to the Museum of Tolerance* three times - the first two times they wouldn't tolerate our lack of a booking, so eventually we learned. This has the lushest multimedia displays on the Holocaust you could hope to see, although I thought it was a bit like putting Mickey Mouse in 3D - but then I hate multimedia displays that talk at you, I like to be able to skip through the boring bits. Great gas chamber though. Amazingly, Lilly was unable to fault its historical accuracy - I managed to fault its grammar. Lilly thought it was very good so I'll let her say more.

* Well, it's mainly about the treatment of Jews, and a lot is based on the work of "Simon Wiesenthal. Nazi Hunter. Humanitarian." I couldn't quite take that tag line seriously.

Finally, LA wouldn't be LA without entertainment, and we managed a fair range. On Saturday, Lilly's friend Brenton was in town, so we went to Musso & Frank's, the 'oldest restaurant in Hollywood' - dating from 1919. I think most of the waiters could have been there on opening night. Great steak though.

On Sunday we went to the cinema, eschewing Hollywood in favour of a French film, The Father of my Children - a (bad) tip from Lilly's dad!

On Monday, Lilly managed to spot a concert from Russell Brand's fake band in his new film (yes, it made that much sense to me, too). As we approached the venue, a guy in a scary leather jacket came up to us and said "Are you here to see Infant Sorrow?" I had a terrible fear that he was going to pull out a small child and rip its arm off, but fortunately that turned out to be the name of the band. Anyway, Brand irritates me more than almost anyone alive, so I skipped this - Lilly really enjoyed it - and went to most of an evening of free, bad and casually racist* stand-up comedy at a hostel. Eventually a not-terrible act came on and I took that as my cue to leave on as close to a high as I was going to get.

* Sample of interaction with audience: "You're German, yes? No? Austrian? Zat is just ze zame, ja?"

Finally, back in Sydney we saw and enjoyed Amanda Palmer at the Opera House and said we'd see her again if we got the chance. She has a new act, Evelyn Evelyn, in which she and Jason Webley play Siamese twins, one arm each for various instruments. It's as mad as it sounds and great fun.

Right: next up is the Grand Canyon, so off we go to get our kicks...

So I realised just in time that I probably shouldn't read this book on a flight...

In fact I'd probably better get it out of my luggage entirely before we get to the U.S..

Looks just like it does in the Machu Pictures

There are two ways to get to Machu Picchu: take the train or walk. There's a famous traditional 3-day walk along an old Inca trail, but you have to book your date months in advance, which we couldn't confidently do. We decided to take one of the alternative guided walks: the Jungle Trek.

Day 1:
The first day is cycling, not trekking. Better still, it's downhill pretty much all the way. 67km on bikes, starting at 4350m above sea level and descending 3km.

Up bright and early, we are driven up into the mountains. The bus driver gives us a preview of what to expect from traffic by cutting corners on every bend. Fortunately there isn't too much traffic. Famously, in Bolivia you can cycle down the 'World's most dangerous road', which some Israelis in our group have recently done ("It's not very dangerous these days. An Israeli girl died the day before we were there, but it's not very dangerous."). Actually I'm quite glad that we're not on that road.

The mountains are very scenic as we wind our way up, and we get out at the highest point on our road - not the highest mountain in sight, but certainly high, and it's positively cold at the top in the wind so we're all wrapped up. On with the helmet and gloves, a quick check of the brakes and away we go.

The first, longest part of the descent is great. It's a good quality tarmac road with a big drainage channel on the inside (although strangely, having gone to this trouble, there are a few bends with great streams of water flowing down from the moutain and across the road - slow down and feet up or you're going to get wet, as we discover the hard way). And it's a great view, as the road switchbacks down the mountain. Occasionally we get off to take a photo that won't do it justice. We pass in and out of sunshine and it gets gradually warmer as we pass through mountain country, down past the upper jungle line where not much grows ('eyebrow jungle' as they call it here), and eventually into the jungle which is much warmer, so we shed some layers and leave them in the bus, which is following us down.

The last section is bumpy dirt road and we occasionally have to pedal, which is a shock to the system, but doesn't detract from the fun. At the bottom our bus takes us to the little village of Santa Maria for lunch.

From here we're supposed to get on a bus to Santa Teresa* but the rather disorganised tour company tells us that we have to wait a couple of hours for two guys in our group to go rafting - or would we like to go rafting too?

* You can do a 3-day or 4-day trip - we're skipping a day of the trip, which involves walking 33km between Santas; so we get a bus instead.

The rafting is very cheap and we enjoyed it in NZ so it seems silly not to. We quickly spot a few differences from NZ. The safety briefing provides a clue - if you fall overboard should you (a) not worry about your paddle, or (b) please try not to lose your paddle? I'll let you guess which country offers which advice.

The second difference is a lack of wetsuits - though disappointingly, we still get bitey insects.

And the third is the water course - there aren't really rapids here, as I'd use the term, but there are a few big rocks and lots of big 'waves' coming towards us when we least expect them. This time I legitimately fell out, as did two other guys. Lilly also went for a swim.* Scenic river, good fun, glad we went.

* She actually went for a swim - deliberately, behind the boat in a calm part of the river.

We get back to find one of our party becoming increasingly irate because the bus hasn't arrived. It transpires there isn't going to be a bus, and for a while it looks likely that we're staying put for the night. Eventually two taxis are found, for ten people. But it turns out that we're quite glad to be wedged into the back with two other people, because otherwise we would be thrown around on our mad taxi ride over dirt roads and through rivers of water. It's probably just as well that it's dark outside so we can't see how many cliff edges we drive along - we just get vague impressions of roads that remind us of Fraser Island. This is, apparently, the main and only road connecting these places. A very basic hostel greets us with a very basic meal and, basically, no hot water. The Israeli guys are travelling around S America and one of them has been accompanied by his dad for their stay in Cusco. He's a nice guy - an engineer taking a brief break from building Tel Aviv's metro system and staying in a **** hotel in Cusco. He's not sure about the hostel. "I have never stayed in such a place," he tells me, "and I never will again. But for 2 nights I guess I can do it."

Day 2:
Today we are walking 23km to Aguas Callientes, the small town at the base of Machu Picchu. Our genial guide Abraham* shows us lots of plants along the way - coca, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, jungle potatoes, jungle tomatoes. When we reach the jungle he occasionally grabs some fruit from trees for us - some of it slightly strange, some of it bananas.

* The rest of our group is 7 Israelis, and the local guide is called Abraham. Weird.

Outside Santa Teresa we reach a valley and he shows us the route we would normally take if a bridge hadn't been washed away in the January floods. (People are already rebuilding on a low area that was completely washed away. Abraham suggests that this is optimistic in the extreme.) And then we just have to cross the valley on a cable car.

Then we reach the cable car. It's terrifying. It's a cable, and a rope, and a little metal cage. And 'cage' sounds more reassuring than this is. It's like the outside edges of a cage with one horizontal bar on each side. You can squeeze two people into it. Those people will not look happy.

The first two pairs across take ages - it's not simple to pull yourself across, even with the running push-off that Abraham gives (at the risk of falling over the edge himself). While we're waiting, a German backpacker arrives, having been told that this is a simple path to follow and that he had to cross the river "and then I did not understand the word, so I thought it must be a bridge or something. Oh Scheisse." Scheisse indeed.

We benefit from the engineer getting to the far side and telling the others how to pull, so we make it across fairly quickly. From here it's a barely discernible path through the jungle hillside (we let the German stick with us as he has no chance of finding his way otherwise), seeing some old Inca trails, past a hydro-electric plant, and finally along the railway line. The severity of flooding they had in January is unbelievable - both the height the water rose to above river level, and the amount that swept down from the mountains washing away sections of road.

In the last few kilometres we get our first glimpses of MP, Waynapicchu, and the sun gate. It all looks incredibly high above us.

We stay overnight in Aguas Calientes, very near to the bottom of the mountain. It's a slightly less basic hostel: they turn the hot water on if you complain. We're pretty tired and very glad that we hadn't walked 33km the previous day (as we would have on the 4-day version).

Day 3:
We're up at 4am to get in the queue for the first buses (which go at 530), to make sure we are in the first 400 people to arrive when MP opens at 6am. The number of visitors to MP is limited only by the number that can get there*, but only 400 get to climb Waynapicchu, the peak above MP. We hit the queue about 4:15 and are rewarded with tickets #312 and 311. If you don't want to take the bus, you can walk up the mountain to MP - 80-90 minutes of steep climb. We took one look at the mountain and decided to save our energy.

* There are quite deliberately no roads to MP, to prevent the site being completely overrun. This works out nicely for Perurail's monopoly. It is less helpful when the railway gets washed away, especially if you're one of the many many people in Cusco totally dependent on tourists for your income.

In a sense, Machu Picchu does not disappoint - it really is as spectacular as the photos you have probably seen of it. Both the landscape and the construction are very impressive, as is the integration of natural rock formations and buildings. But it is perhaps a bit of a letdown when it comes to the detail. There is virtually no carving or ornamentation or artefacts. The impact of the terraces (or 'steps' as I previously referred to them) is probably a bit diminished by the other sites we saw in the Sacred Valley - they would be amazing if we hadn't seen similar landscaping already.

We start with a two hour guided tour, and the highlights that it shows feel a bit of a stretch - a room with 3 windows; a condor formed by a carving on the floor, two sweeps of natural rock that might be wings, and a lot of imagination; and a sundial which demonstrates impressive knowledge of solstice and equinox but no great beauty. Our guide for this section (not Abraham) doesn't add much to the experience. Then we are free to explore for the rest of the day. It's a pretty big site, not least because not much of it is flat. Good fun to clamber around.

The 'classic' photo of MP is taken from the highest point on the site itself, but you can get more of an aerial view by climbing Waynapicchu. This is initially intimidating as it looms high and steep above MP with no obvious route up, but there are stairs that can't be seen from a distance, and which demonstrate that the Incas' many fine building skills did not really extend to stairs. A fairly exhausting climb but well worth it for the views. (As Lilly observed, there can't have been many fat Incas.)

After that we took a walk to see the reconstruction of an old Inca bridge. On the way, we pass the high point for the second time. While we're here, a cloud rolls along, at first blotting out much of WP and neighbouring mountains to ethereal effect, and then moving over MP itself so the city almost completely vanishes from view. A little bit of rain earlier in the day was worth it to see this.

Eventually we're tired and have seen pretty much all there is to see. It's only 3pm. But then we have been up here for 9 hours.

Due to the very limited trains and a fine piece of travel agent dishonesty (quick shout out to Expediciones Vilca, I hope nobody ever uses them) we were stuck in Aguas Calientes until 945pm. AC is a small town of very little charm which exists almost solely to service MP - its other attraction is the hot springs which give the town its name (actually its official name is Machu Picchu Pueblo, but that gets confusing, because MP is already the both the name of the mountain and the name given to the ancient city, whose original name is long lost. MP means 'old mountain', Waynapicchu is 'young mountain'. WP is a good bit higher than the city of MP but smaller than the peak of MP mountain, which you can also climb but, whoof, looked too tough for us. Hope that's clear - there will be a test later.)

We dragged ourselves up the hill to try out the springs - 'hot' is slightly overstating it and annoyingly there were no seats in the pools, but it did wonders for our aching limbs.

And finally getting home - a train as far as it goes, which currently is not very far. Guideless, we had been told we would be picked up here, but there is no bus. Fuming, we get on Perurail's shuttle bus to Ollantaytambo, where, miraculously, there is a minibus waiting for us. And finally back to our hostel at 2am, a 22 hour day, for a well-deserved sleep.

We had a great time here. If MP doesn't completely wow it's only because expectations are very high - still a great place to visit. And although you never hear about them, the other Inca sites around are also well worth seeing. Finally, Cusco itself is a much nicer place than we expected. You won't get luxury unless you pay for it, and many of the restaurants are very forgettable but there are some nicer ones worth seeking out.

For us, it's on to the U.S. - a few days in L.A. and then the Grand Canyon. That means a six hour stopover in Lima airport, which is pleasant and modern, and a midnight flight onward. Probably one more blog entry on South America to follow...

Machu Picchu Trek 5

The cloud rolls in! You couldn't see Machu Picchu at all within
another 5 minutes.

Machu Picchu Trek 4

Err, San Francisco baseball cap.

Machu Picchu Trek 3

Peruvian Chullo hat!

Machu Picchu Trek 2

The view of Machu Picchu from the top of Waynapicchu. Can you spot the
Condor shape?

Machu Picchu Trek 1

After 67km of biking, 23km of walking, an unknown distance of
whitewater rafting and far too little sleep we finally make it to
Machu Picchu for sunrise and, boy, is it worth it.....

Oh, and we climbed the mountain in the background (Waynapicchu) later
in the day!

Can't thInca a pun

Cusco is the base for the famous Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, but it's also a beautiful place in its own right. It's at the highest altitude we've ever set foot on, so you're advised to spend a few days here before doing anything as strenuous as trekking. Not kidding. Our hostel is less than 5 minutes' walk from the main square up a reasonably steep hill. On our first night we were gasping for breath by the time we reached the top. The other effect of altitude is basically to dehydrate you, so we tend to wake up every morning feeling slightly hungover without having drunk anything. Fortunately you do adapt, unless you're one of the unlucky few who feels absolutely terrible.

The historical quarter of Cusco is lovely. It centres around a very large square with two large and well-preserved churches, and pretty much all the buildings that line the square fit the feel of the place, most with nice wooden balconies. Even the McDonald's makes a rare concession towards blending in. Away from the square is a warren of narrow cobbled streets, with more squares and churches thrown in for good measure.

It is touristy - probably on the brink of being too much so, with a lot of little shops and stalls selling same-same souvenirs (which do at least have some local charm) and people trying to sell you things in the street, but they're not annoyingly persistent.

The tourist industry is so important here that learning English is compulsory in schools. This is the gateway to Machu Picchu and pretty much every visitor spends a few days in Cusco. The city was hard hit by the closure of MP for a few months after the landslides 6 months ago. All the museums etc seem to have responded by jacking up their prices (more expensive than Argentina or Brazil); I'm not sure if the highly competitive local shops and restaurants have had that luxury. So I don't for a minute think that Cusco gives a picture of Peru (which is a very cheap place) - you can pay the whole range of prices from local to luxury. Any shop with prices in US$ is easy to mark down as expensive! But for a touch of authenticity, our hostel did spend 48 hours without water due to local shortages, sending Lilly up the wall and forcing her to resort to a succession of headgear to cover up her unwashed hair.

We arrived on Tuesday, shattered, and took it fairly easy for the first couple of days - getting a sense of the place, a bit of shopping, and most importantly sorting out our trip to MP.

We also popped into the Iglesia de San Blas, paying an extortionate (by local standards) fee to see an intricately carved pulpit, crowned with the skull of the artist. And the Museo de Arte Popular, a bizarre but fun collection of clay sculptures.

On Friday we kicked into gear. We spent the morning visiting four Incan sites just outside town: Saqsayhuaman (a large site, mainly remants of large stone walls remaining, not essential though Lilly liked it), Q'Enqo (a good place to get a coffee and see where they used to sacrifice llamas, but time has taken its toll), Tambomachay (small but well-preserved), and Puka Pukara (impressive from a distance). You can walk to the first, and pop in to see Cusco's own statue of Christ a la Rio while getting lost on the way to the second. Then grab one of the frequent local hop-on hop-off minibuses up to the last two for 25 pence, and another back to town. They get ridiculously full, and we hit the lunchtime school rush...

For lunch Lilly finally got some ceviche, which she's been looking for all over South America, but turned out not to be quite as good as the one she made herself back home.

Then onto the Museo de Sitio del Qorikancha (small underground museum most notable for some interesting skulls - some trepanated, others deliberately deformed as young children by the parents , which is not pleasant).

Santo Domingo is a Spanish church which was built on top of an Incan site, Qorikancha - from the outside, you can clearly see the two distinct styles of building. You can also fight through the tour groups to see a nice cloister inside.

The Museo de Arte Precolombino is a small and picky museum, with only the very best examples of historical artefacts from Peru. Very good. The Museo Inka is where you can find all the other relics that aren't as good, plus more skulls and some sinister mummies, but worth a visit if you have time.

It seems to be common for local musicians to pop into restaurants and play for tips. We got lucky on Thursday with a decent group who even covered 'The Girl From Ipanema', but on Friday in a Chinese restaurant we had the misfortune to hear the worst music ever - an old guy playing what looked like a harp with two mandolins attached to the bottom. We saw a blind man play perfectly acceptable music on the same instrument the next day, but the first guy sounded like a particularly tuneless 3-year-old attacking a piano with a squeaky balloon.

On Saturday we took a trip out of town into the Sacred Valley. Word has it that most of the organised tours rush you round and prefer to take you to shops and markets, so we got our hostel to fix us up with a driver and itinerary, which cost a little more but worked out really well.

First up was Chinchero, a church in need of some whitewash - perhaps the Vatican is hogging it and an amazing set of agricultural 'steps' (a steep hillside that they had cut into steps wide enough to cultivate, held up with rock walls - although I think this benefitted from being our first stop since this is a recurring theme).

Moray is even more impressive, a small valley turned into concentric circlular steps. Theory has it that this was a kind of agricultural laboratory - testing which crops grow best at which level. Very well preserved, with a few plants still around but mostly grass. As with Chinchero, climbing down and back up is hard work!

Part of the fun of our day is just the drive, surrounded by beautiful mountains, but we also got to see a bit of rural Peru here: mud-brick houses and boys herding donkeys carrying crops.

Nearby is Salineras de Maras, an amazing salt mine. As far as I can tell, a salty spring bursts out of the mountain. At some point long ago some cunning chaps set up a complex irrigation system on the mountainside below it, forming lots of small rectangular pools which in turn fill with water, evaporate leaving a layer of salt, and are dug out. It's huge. Never seen anything like it.

Saving the best for second-to-last is the unmissable site at Ollantaytambo. Up another huge set of grass steps are the remains of a religious centre (later a fortress). The massive quantities of rock - including a few huge square rocks - that have been dragged up here to build this are almost unthinkable. At the bottom is an irrigation system; at the top is a throne which faces across the valley, perfectly positioned for the rising sun at the equinox, facing elaborate buildings and a huge (carved? Natural? Hybrid?) face complete with 'crown' on the far mountainside.

Last but not least: Pisac. This really feels like a fortress, perched high on a mountain and almost inaccessible (by which I mean there's no clear or wide path up to it, though I might also refer to the road here which features various landslides and fallen rocks, and has partially subsided into a river!). Another path hugs the mountain through a hewn-out tunnel and, if you have time, leads down the far side to more ancient buildings. Fabulous views.

All in all a great day out, which has us raring to go for Machu Picchu. Back in a few days...

Maracana - FlamenGhost Town

Saturday was Lilly's birthday and we mainly took a break from tourist activities. In the (late) morning we went to the Red Bull Air Race on Flamengo Beach, complete with giant screens and loudspeaker commentary in Portuguese and English. This is supposed to be a grand prix for planes and Rio was the fourth race of the season, I think. They set up giant inflatable cones to act as gates, out in the harbour, and planes have to fly a course through them in the fastest possible time. It's a time trial rather than a race, with penalties for clipping gates, flying too high or at the wrong angle - Saturday was qualifying, Sunday was going to determine final positions, with a bonus championship point for the fastest circuit on Saturday so that anyone who's sure of qualifying from their first run can really go for it on their second. Or as the commentator put it, "He can really go bananas - it doesn't matter if he hits a gate". I just love the idea that any aeroplane flying at up to 350kph can hit anything without it mattering. (Of course, the gates are so silky soft that when one was clipped, we didn't even notice as it deflated very slowly.) I was a bit sceptical that this would hold our interest, but they rattled through nicely; and it turns out that if you hold it on a beach in Rio, with Sugar Loaf mountain in the background and lots of enterprising chaps selling drinks and prawns-on-sticks, it's good fun. As it turned out, rain on Sunday meant that the action we saw counted as final positions.

We planned to visit the Carmen Miranda museum but, typical of our luck here*, it was closed for maintenance. We found the biggest mall in Rio to make up for it, saw the new Woody Allen film Whatever Works (asking Larry David to act does not work), and after discovering that our intended restaurant had closed down, we had a nice Thai meal.

* I was *not* secretly pleased; it was Lilly's birthday, after all.

On Sunday, in between bouts of torrential rain, we went to the Hippie Market in Ipanema (not very exciting) and then on to the Maracana for what should have been the footballing highlight of our tour: Flamengo v Sao Paulo, the first game of the Brazilian league season*, in this huge, famous bowl of a stadium.

* Coincidentally on the day the Premier League season finished - we saw enough of the last games over lunch to know how that was going to turn out.

The Maracana is pretty cool, if a little rough around the edges, but the big letdown was that nobody thought this was an important game, despite being between 'the biggest team in Rio' and 'the best team in Brazil'. There seem to be dozens of competitions here - you can see live football on television pretty much every night - including the Brazilian Cup, state championships, and significantly the Copa Libertadores. Both teams had played midweek and had already arranged their quarter-final fixtures for the following Wednesday (with a speed that would be impossible in Europe). Both decided to prioritise the CL and, apparently, 'agreed' on Saturday that they would field weakened sides. The fans knew, and couldn't be bothered turning up. I haven't seen attendance figures, but there couldn't be more than 15 thousand people in a stadium that holds 90.* There were few apparent restrictions on where you could sit - some people had whole sections to themselves. In one saving grace, we were sat close to the largest, noisiest posse of home fans, so the atmosphere was decent, although the vast swathes of empty seats opposite us was rather distracting. And the game wasn't bad, apart from some shocking finishing - a lot of enthusiastic but unstructered attacking led to a 1-1 with plenty of chances towards the end. The only players of note were Manchester United reject Kleberson, and the veteran Dejan Petkovic, who was one of the stars of my Plymouth Argyle team in Championship Manager many, many years ago. So probably of interest only to me.

* Oh, the other excuse I was given for the attendance was that it was Mother's Day here! Honestly, we've seen more people in Flamengo shirts around town this week than there were in the stadium.

Nice to see that some football songs are common across S America, even with a different language - our favourite is a distinctive "Allee-allee-allee-ey" (repeat 3 times). The fourth line is slightly different in Portuguese than Spanish, but close enough.

Monday was our last day in Rio, and we've done pretty much everything we wanted to do - so not that many options left because pretty much every museum, etc in Brazil is closed on Mondays. I did manage to stir myself to go for a run along Copacabana beach. One of the nice features here is the pavements, believe it or not - they're mostly composed of small black and white tiles in patterns, and each street has its own pattern. Copacabana, for example, has a distinctive wave pattern that you see on some souvenirs.

At lunch we realised we still hadn't been to a rodizio - basically an all-you-can-eat with a salad table*, and waiters bring round a variety of grilled meats on skewers and carve them onto your plate. You get a little card with a green side for 'more meat!' and a red side for 'I will just eat the meat I have on my plate but I may well want more meat soon'. We went to a place called Carretao - pretty good.

* Lilly had all-you-can-palmito.

When the rain returned, we spent the early evening watching Shutter Island and disagreeing on whether the ending lets down an enjoyable film (hint: it does), and dinner at Braseiro da Gavea for one last chance to be baffled at the size of portions (my grilled sandwich and chips both featured in the same section of the menu, but the chips were enough for 2 or 3 people). We'll never understand.

Next: an overnight bus to Sao Paulo, where music from the driver's cabin and snoring will keep us awake, a flight to Lima and then another to Cusco. Just the 19 hours total. Hopefully Machu Picchu will be well worth it...

Lilly's Highlights & Recommendations # 25 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

(Now with added photos!)

We spent 8 days and 9 nights in Rio in total so plenty of material for a Top 5 and some added extras...
1. Inside Rio City Tour - an excellent half day tour. Stops at: Cristo  Redentor (unfortunately under scaffolding, but you do get a sense of the scale and some great views), Maracana football stadium (but only
the Hall of Fame where you can stand in famous players' footsteps. This is fun (there is one female player with tiny feet!) but we would have been disappointed not to see inside the stadium if we hadn't been going back), the Sambadrome (nothing much to this outside Carnaval apart from the bank of seats where the main Carnaval parade takes place but you can try on a Carnaval costume which is fun and heavy!), Cathedral of San Sebastian (a bit of a modernist monster from the outside but absolutely stunning inside - one of the surprises of the trip), Sugar Loaf Mountain for sunset (scary cable car ride, amazing, amazing views). I would definitely recommend this tour which saves a lot of faffing around trying to get to the individual sites yourself.

2. Favela Tour - the raison d'être of this 3 hour tour seems to be to prove that the favelas aren't as lawless as they are normally depicted and that 90% of the people who live there are law obiding citizens not gun toting criminals. And it suceeds. At no point did we feel unsafe or witness any guns or crime and the scruffy houses, masses of telegraph wires and street stalls reminded us of Vietnam more than anything. However, there are two sides to any story and in this way the tour disappoints. They are clearly keeping you away from the
poorest areas, which I suspect are really shocking and of course the reason you feel safe is because 'security' is being provided by the drug lords and their lackeys who want to keep the police off their patch. I suspect our 'security' is someone else's nightmare. Having said all of that it is worth doing - the Marcelo Armstrong tour we did donates a large proportion of the cost to a community school - and it is the only way you will understand the massive contrast between rich and poor in Rio (often only separated by the thickness of a wall) but I did feel that we were only getting one side of the story.

3. Street party in Lapa - what a way to see in my 30th birthday! The streets of Lapa turn into one big party on Friday nights. The main square is filled with food and drink stalls and there are so many people trying to fit in too few bars that the streets are full with people having their own party. We started the evening with the strange experience of drinking Capirinhas while standing on a petrol station forecourt and finished it in a bar with live samba music! The whole night felt really Brazilian and wild - they really know how to throw a
party! We had also met a couple of really nice Canadian girls (shout out to Melissa and Becky) at our hostel who entered into the birthday drinking with spirit! A great night; I completely forgot to be depressed about being 30!

4. Selaron Staircase - a public staircase flanked on either side by residential buildings leading up from Lapa to Santa Teresa barrios. The thing that sets it apart though is that it is completely covered in a mosaic of tiles. It is the work of Chilean artist Selaron who has painted some of the tiles or had them donated. It is bright and
beautiful. One of my favourite things to see in Rio.

5. Santa Teresa - this is a largely residential barrio that sits on top of a hill above the Lapa and Centro barrios. You can reach it via a tram which has been running across the Lapa Viaduct for over 100 years. Not a very efficient way to travel but worth it for the authentic 'old Rio' feel and to see the kids hang off the outside of
the tram! (The tram isn't far from the municipal theatre in Centro which has been *beautifully* restored and is in a gorgeous Parisian style.) The barrio itself is bohemian, artsy and scruffy but is the prettiest barrio in Rio (it feels a bit like you have gone on a day trip to a small local town) and is worth a couple of hours wandering
around.

There are some other things which I feel like I should mention:

Red Bull Air Race - a fun couple of hungover hours spent at this on my birthday morning; sat on Flamengo beach watching light aircraft pilots do time trails through various gates, while eating prawns on sticks and drinking beer (me, not the pilots!)

Botanical Gardens - not an especially beautiful botanical garden; a bit short on flowers. But it is a lovely peaceful park amid the madness of Rio and does have some lovely orchids and cacti.

Beaches - you might be surprised that I haven't mentioned Rio's beaches. That is simply because they aren't the best we have seen in Brazil. I can only really describe them as urban beaches. The two most famous beaches (Ipanema and Copacabana) are separated from a 4-lane road by a matter of a few metres, and therefore don't have the charm even of other city beaches we have seen such as Bondi in Sydney which
still retains a suburban seaside town feel. Still, they do give the city a real buzz and in some ways feel like the true heart of the city.

Shopping - I feel as if the shopping in Rio isn't very good, but I still managed to buy a lot of stuff! I think the thing about it is that it doesn't have many recognisible international chains or many independent boutiques, but what it does have is a lot of chain stores which I have only seen in Brazil which sell really nice stuff. I
particularly liked Oh Boy! and Dress. Havaianas are a bargain too of course as they are Brazilian made.

Maracana (Flamengo 1 - 1 Sao Paolo) - surprisingly the least atmospheric of the S American football stadiums we have been to despite it being Brazil's national stadium. This was probably due to the small attendance (apparently the result of a number of key players being rested in advance of the semi final of their Champions League equivalent) although in a 90,000 seater it must be hard to fill it very often. Still, the Flamengo fans were noisy enough to give us a picture of what it must be like when it is full. Wow!

Food - nothing particularly special to report on the Rio food scene. A lot of grilled meat and Italian influenced food as usual, but with more Oriental options which is good. My best meal in Rio was a palmito pizza (at Boteco Belmonte) which seemed to have no tomato and a ton of cheese and was delicious! Caipirinhas continue to play a big part in the Brazil experience. I wasn't aware that they came in any fruit
other than lime, but they do -lots! It has been fun trying out the different flavours (and cheating by substituting the cachaca for vodka or sake). My current favourite is passionfruit with vodka!

Buzios - we did a day trip to the 'Saint-Tropez' of Brazil (discovered by Bridgette Bardot in the 1950s - Bardot shops, restaurants and street names abound). For less than £40 each and including a 2 hour boat trip (with free (weak) Caipirinhas and opportunites to jump off into the beautifully warm sea), a buffet lunch and a couple of hours to wander around the swanky shops it was a really good value, fun day out. The beaches and town don't quite match Paraty though.

We also saw a few films while we were in Rio (we like the cinema,ok?).
Here are some quick reviews:
Iron Man 2 - lots of fun. In a similar vein to the first one. Robert Downey-Junior is ace and the Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell baddies are great. Shame the female parts are useless.
Whatever Works - a very lightweight Woody Allen comedy. You also have to like Larry David (and a distinctive Allen script) which isn't easy but I'll forgive him anything because of Seinfeld. Enjoyable but very
much an acquired taste.
Shutter Island - I thought this was absolutely brilliant. Clever and thrilling. Brilliantly filmed with an award winning (in my opinion only it would seem) turn from Leo DiCaprio. Very much recommended.

Finally, although it doesn't really have a place in the Rio top 5 as it was our previous destination I didn't do a blog on Paraty and just wanted to use this opportunity to sing its praises. The beautifully preserved colonial town is, well, beautiful. A mixture of whitewash and splashes of colour and all set on a river and the sea. We spent one day doing a private boat tour (private by default - no one else in our nice hostel signed up) of the local beaches and it was amazingly beautiful. All for less than £10 each. Paraty is a real Brazilian highlight.

Next stop (breathe deep!) Cusco in Peru!

The grill from Ipanema

On Wednesday we hit the Centro region of Rio, which is much more salubrious than the centre of Sao Paulo. We walked through a bit of Flamengo Park - a long, thin stretch of greenery along the harbour - past the war memorial, then failed to get into the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) because we hadn't realised it didn't open till noon. So we had a wander round the heart of Rio in baking sun, looking at various cathedrals, the library, the Museo das Belas Artes (modelled on the Louvre, sans pyramid) and the rather grand theatre. Tucked away around here is the Traversa Comercio, a nice set of back streets full of restaurants which was quickly filling up with local workers having lunch. One of the main streets runs for a few hundred metres with nothing but banks, and it swarms with people at lunchtime. We popped back to MAM and again failed to get in, as we hadn't noticed a very small and understated piece of paper saying that it was closed for a month in preparation for something or other. Bah. (Bizarrely, both times we came here we saw different people going past on segways. I'm not sure how that leads into anything...)

Next we headed for Santa Teresa, an old region of Rio perched on a hillside. You can take a tram up here, as people have done for over 100 years over the Lapa viaduct (a former aqueduct). In fact we waited what felt like 100 years for a tram, which eventually filled up and set off very slowly with people hanging off the sides. Should have stuck to the bus. Anyway, Santa Teresa is a real ramble, with some pretty if tired houses, and a few shops and bars but nothing exceptional. We walked back to the viaduct (overtaking a tram, which had got stuck behind another tram that was performing maintenance on the overhead cables - honestly, stick to the buses up here!), calling in at the Chácara do Céu Museum - this is basically someone's house and art collection, not really worth going out of your way for, although on the way out you can walk through and climb up a weird skeletal house that looks like one of MC Escher's staircase pictures - fortunately going up the stairs really does lead you up to some decent views.

Finally, back near the viaduct, we eventually managed to find the Selarón Staircase. Finding anything is a bit of a mission, unless you're in a flat part of Rio, because of the topography - you really need a 3D map to get a sense of which bits are on hillsides. Worth the effort though. This is a set of stone steps linking Lapa and Santa Teresa, and the Chilean artist Jorge Selarón has covered every one of the risers in tiles, some from around the world and some he has painted. Having finished the steps, he's liberally tiled the pavements and walls at the bottom too. Really worth a visit, and I'd recommend walking up it rather than down (I wouldn't worry about missing out on the tram!).

Had a nice dinner at the bar where the song The Girl from Ipanema was allegedly written - and they are keen to let you know this, with reproductions of the original hand-written lyrics painted on the wall - where we solved the problem of having to order meals for two by getting grilled chicken with palmitos. I ate the lion's share (in the modern usage) of the chicken*; Lilly ate the lion's share (in the original usage**) of the palmitos! We then popped into an Irish bar*** to drink Brazilian beer and watch South American football, with a good assortment of locals turning out to support Rio's Flamengo against Corinthians in the Copa Libertadores****, where a few Brazilian stars were milking their former fame. We saw the unusual sight of Roberto Carlos hitting the target from a free kick, Ronaldo scoring with a thumping header despite - or perhaps because - his feet didn't have to leave the ground, and Adriano doing... well, nothing. Great game, really end-to-end. We felt obliged to support Flamengo and were disappointed to see them 2-1 down, then a bit surprised to see Corinthians' keeper go up for a corner and then the local fans cebrate defeat, at which point we realised that this was the second leg, unmentioned by any on-screen caption - Flamengo went through on away goals despite losing on the night.

* Sadly, grilled chicken is not as good in Brazil as in Argentina. Does anyone know where I should look in Rio FerdiNandos?

** Think about it - if you're 'sharing' with a lion, how much are you going to get? Even if I liked palmitos, 'sharing' them with Lilly would probably end up the same way - her current favourite food.

*** Called The Irish Bar. We walked past the previous night when it was very sleepy and 4 of its 6 customers were playing chess. They like their Irish bars around here - Shenanigans, in the same square, had live music and a good atmosphere.

**** South America's version of the Champions League.

On Thursday we went on a favela tour. I might leave this to Lilly to describe in more detail, since she found it interesting whereas I'm a hard-nosed economist with no interest in people... In brief, favelas are areas of poor housing that spring up in the gaps and on the edges of Brazilian cities. There are many of them in Rio, unusually close to the centre and generally perched on hillsides (so some of them have great views). The first one we went to had 85,000 inhabitants! They can be pretty dangerous places, largely because of drug dealers fighting with each other or the police; on the other hand, the drug dealers keep a lid on other crime as much as possible. I guess the main thing I took from this is that the favelas aren't nearly as bad as you might imagine - all of them have electrivity and water (most of the time, at least), they have shops and banks, they take Mastercard, there used to be a McDonald's for a while and local chain Bob's Burgers is still there, most people have jobs... We've seen worse poverty and living conditions in south-east Asia and I bet you'd see far worse in Africa - I guess the point here is the contrast with the rest of Rio, but there's nothing particularly shocking or unique here. So in effect we just got to walk round round a fairly shabby and poor town, which isn't my idea of an interesting afternoon. The tour does feel perfectly safe, though, as you'd hope.

Dinner was a nice Chinese - one of the few cuisines where we're happy to share the same dish - looking out on Copacabana by the touristy night market.

On Friday we took a day trip to Búzios, north up the coast, a small fishing village until 1965 when Bridget Bardot holidayed here, and now a fairly swanky destination with beaches, island and boutiquey shops. We set off early on a misty morning (out of Rio along the 14km long bridge to Niteroi on the other side of the bay - we couldn't see the far end of the bridge for mist), but the sun was blazing by the time we arrived. After a wander around town we went out on a cruise around the bay, pausing periodically to leap off the side for a swim. Very nice, and a good break from the city.
We made it back in plenty of time to hit the busy streets of Lapa, which heave with people on a Friday evening. A chap from our hostel took us up there - for some reason the best place to meet his friends was a petrol station, so we spent a little while outside there having a drink before heading in for a bit of live Brazilian music. There are lots of bars, and street stalls sell food and drink, while music blasts out of every venue. It has the kind of energy I associate with Brazil. Good fun.

I want a Rio and I want one now

The great thing about Rio that immediately stands out is its landscape - a huge bay and wonderful mountains make it probably the most picturesque city we've seen. The rate at which the city has grown, with organic growth hindered by the mountains dotted throughout the city, brings its own problems, but the views are fantastic from vantage points and there are great backdrops wherever you are at ground level. So I'll jump ahead and start with the views.

On Tuesday, our second full day, we took a minibus tour around to see some of the main sights (I'll namecheck it as I couldn't find a single mention using google - an Inside Rio tour). Decent value by the time you work out how much you would have paid to go up mountains, etc, and makes life a lot easier than trying to work out which city buses to take - and all the stops on the tour were worthwhile. We had a small group, just a Japanese couple, a Croat and a Frenchman. Strangely the Croatian and French guys took photos of everything, far more photos than the Japanese which goes against all stereotypes and indeed our experience; but the Japanese couple struck yoga poses in their photos, which was fun to watch.

The highlight was probably Christo Redentor, 'Christ the Redeemer', the iconic statue high above Rio. The view are fabulous, and I highly recommend doing this on your first clear day in Rio as you get a great overview - literally - of the city. Unfortunately Christ is having his 10-yearly maintenance, covered in scaffolding (in the shape of a cross, which amused me given the statue's arms-extended pose). Normally you can see him clearly from a lot of Rio; at the moment it depends on the angle and light as to whether he looks like a man or a box. Up close you can't see too much - the scaffolding over his face has been covered by a painting of his face, as with the current style for scaffolding on famous buildings, but you can't see this from a distance and up close the angle doesn't really work - we were amused to see a guy's legs dangling between the actual chin and the picture of the face. Anyway, you come up here for the views and Christ ain't in them anyway, he's behind you when you're taking your photos. We've had great weather in Rio so far, scorching most days, and it was a fabulously clear day so perfect for this.

On our way up, and down, we saw some evidence of the recent mudslides that killed so many people here, but mostly it's been cleared up now - you wouldn't know, if you hadn't seen the news. Access to Christ was temporarily cut off as a result - really glad it got fixed in time for us to go up there.

The other great view of the day is from the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain, sticking out into the bay and reached via two cable cars. We came here for sunset, and again it's great - not as high as Christ, but a superb view back over Rio, and very nice as the sun sets.

In between we took in a display of famous footprints at the Maracana (the huge national football stadium - we plan to be back here for a match on Sunday); and then the heart of Brazil's Carnaval, Sambadrome - we hadn't realised that the key bit of Carneval is a slow parade, past what looks like a road with many blocks of seating along one side, by each of Rio's samba schools in turn. The rest of the year, it's just slightly sad-looking concrete blocks of seats. But at the end is a little building which inducts favela kids into samba, and for a small fee to this good cause you can try on some of last year's outfits, as Lilly did - photos to follow.

One more stop on the tour was the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian, one of Oscar Niemeyer's famous works (see Sao Paulo blog). This should be a disaster, a modernist building in unorthodox shape like an overturned octagonal plantpot with a cavernous interior. But inside it's actually brilliant, four huge modern stained glass windows converging to make a small glass cross in the ceiling.

We're staying near Copacabana beach (slightly less cool than Ipanema, but accommodation is easier to find). It's quite high-rise around here - hard to tell whether it's sunny until you actually go outside, because not enough sunlight makes its way inside. The beaches look great, of course, long strips of golden sand separated from hotels and shops and residences only by a dual carriageway (which has funny tiny petrol stations in the central reservation) - it's normal to see people walking through the city in just their swimming cossies. The beaches are also well equipped with volleyball courts (though they seem to be more used for football-style volleyball than conventional rules - it is Brazil, after all) and dozens of little open air bars.

Other scenic features include a large lagoon (with a little island that appears to be taken up by a swanky health club), and spacious botanic gardens (no monkeys sighted even on Monkey River, disappointingly, but some fun cacti).

Lilly was pleased to find that Rio also does malls well, most of which include cinemas - we took the chance to catch the enjoyable Iron Man 2. We were pleased to find that most American films here are subtitled rather than dubbed, although there was a dodgy moment when characters spoke Russian and the English subtitles were missing, so we had the choice of hearing the Russian version or reading the Portuguese subtitles... Fortunately this didn't seem critical, and a couple of hours of air conditioning were very welcome after a long day walking too far in Rio. We're enjoying ourselves and will be here for a week before flying to Peru, so more to follow.

Paraty on the beach

Paraty is a small town on the coast a few hours south of Rio. It has two great attractions*. The first is its historic town, well-preserved from colonial times, all cobbled streets (huge, ankle-breaking cobbles) and colourful painted buildings. The second is its position on the coast, with a host of pretty islands and beaches on its doorstep.

* Lilly would argue three, but I can't guarantee that there will be kittens in your hostel here, so best not to use that on the publicity unless they make kittens compulsory.

On our first day here, we just had time to wander round the historic centre and take a few photos before the inevitable rain fell - our seventh consecutive wet day. Even in this English weather, it's an attractive place. Much like Bruges, almost every building is well kept up. In the face of this rain, we nearly gave up and went to Rio, but in the end we decided to make a stand: we're not leaving until we get some sunshine.

Friday was better - the odd glimpse of blue sky, the sun occasionally struggling to break out. We took the bus to Trinidade, a little village down the coast with some beautiful beaches, all of which have the Brazil-trademark little beach bars hoping to sell you lunch. Unfortunately, every single one follows the Brazilian tradition of wanting to serve you dishes for 2 people, which is not ideal when one of you wants to eat fresh seafood and the other expressly does not, so we retreated to the village for lunch - not such a bad thing as it then rained for an hour. Back to the beach, where we saw lots of kids arrive after school to play football and clamber round the headland with surfboards (an impressively aggressive tide was producing large waves and could occasionally soak the unwary person standing beyond the normal tideline, which may in turn lead to insect repellent being washed off their legs and them being bitten by sandflies or their local cousins and itching for several days).

A pleasant day out, and we also got to see some old-school currency - a 1-real note (this is now normally a coin, with the smallest note in common circulation being a 2). The bus driver gave it to me in my change and had the look of someone who has been trying to get rid of something for days. He was quite amused when I gave it back to him 5 hours later to pay for my return ticket. He then had to do a lot of persuading to get another woman to accept it as her change. I like to think it will come back to him again.

Saturday brought sunshine, at last! Our patience rewarded. Our hostel runs a daily boat tour - though I can't imagine it has been used this week - and as the only people signing up for it, we got a bargain private trip. It really is a lovely bay, framed by forested hills. We stopped on one island for a swim, then pulled up to another for wildlife spotting: eels and many dozens of fish in the water, golden monkeys and maybe capybaras on the shore. Our skipper threw bread to the fish, who went into a bit of a feeding frenzy. We noticed that if we threw from one side of the boat, the fish would immediately retreat before coming back for the bread, while on the other side they had no such fears. Soon we realised this was because we were casting shadows on the former side, and when our shadows moved they thought that some of the many circling birds were swooping. The monkeys were particularly cute, golden hair falling over their tiny faces and long, black-tipped tails, complete with a couple of youngsters - I would wager a small guess at golden-haired tamarinds, though I'll probably be embarassed when I google them. A really enjoyable day out, and near-perfect weather until the sun finally went in around 4pm. (Although we did find the answer to the question what's worse than a cafe that only serves dishes for 2: a cafe that only serves dishes for 2 <i>and they're all seafood dishes</i>.

More great weather on Sunday prompted us to get up early for a wander around the old town in proper sunlight before getting the bus to Rio. It's a great scenic coastal bus ride, bays and islands and deep blue water, and a nuclear power plant just for variety... But Paraty was great, definitely recommended for a quick stop or a few days.