We very quickly settled into Port Louis. After two weeks of being gently rocked to sleep by the Atlantic, what we really craved was land that didn't move. Terra firma felt like a luxury, and I caught myself pressing my feet into the concrete marina floor just to feel the reassuring lack of swell. Pookie, who views seasickness as a personal insult from Neptune himself, was positively glowing at the prospect of a stable horizon.

Just before our friend and fellow Viking Kenet had to leave us, the fleet held a celebratory award ceremony. Everyone gathered to retell their Atlantic crossing stories, each narrative more salted with adventure than the last. We listened to tales of calm seas and following winds, of dolphin pods and star-filled skies. When our turn came, we realised our crossing had been less of a gentle cruise and more of a maritime soap opera. We had ripped the hook from its padeye, we had the bilge pump incident, and we had generally treated the ocean as a series of unfortunate events strung together. Thanks again to Kenet we still won an award for the biggest fish, even though AJ, our friend and ex-captain of the famous Black Pearl, had probably hauled in something larger. But awards, like fish stories, are all about the telling.

We decided to move Sawasdeekat around the coast to Prickly Bay. The whole south coast of Grenada is a minefield of reefs and shallow waters, a submarine obstacle course that demands respect. Now, if you recall from our Atlantic crossing blog, we had ripped the hook from its padeye on the bow. In my efforts to get this repaired, I had removed the fitting so we could purchase a matching replacement. Kenet had assured me he had refilled the small bolt holes to stop any water ingress. What he had actually done was place sticky tape over the holes. Proper sailor tape, the kind that holds the universe together… until it doesn't.

With Kenet back in the UK and us feeling brave, we set off. As we rounded the headland into choppier water, Sawasdeekat dug her bows deeper into the waves and started drinking the Caribbean through those tiny taped holes. The first we knew about it was the bilge alarm screaming in panic. Pookie opened the door to the laundry and freezer area and found herself staring at an indoor swimming pool three inches deep and rising. The fridge, never a strong swimmer, had already been overcome by seawater and had decided to end its days rather than fight. I quickly called our friends and fellow Vikings Steve and Sue, who had two very capable crew members. They whizzed out to meet us like a marine cavalry, armed with pumps and pipes. Thankfully this section of the hull is watertight, so the only casualty was the freezer. Some things never change on this boat.

Anyway, to make fixing easier, we tucked Sawasdeekat into Secret Cove Marina, a tiny hideaway catering for about a dozen boats. Here we found a local tradesman who fitted a new padeye, reattached the code zero furler and rehung the ripped but rolled code zero. We spent lovely days exploring the island, buying boat parts, and generally pretending we knew what we were doing. But our minds were already drifting west towards Brazil.

Why Brazil? Well the Rio Carnival is world renowned. It sits on bucket lists like a glittering trophy, and although we were still thousands of miles away, it suddenly felt close enough to touch. We left Sawasdeekat safely in the marina and flew out. Getting there proved characteristically awkward. Planes seemed to prefer going north before heading south, so we took a five hour flight to New York, changed terminals, and then caught a nine hour flight back down to Rio de Janeiro.

To keep the costs down we travelled with only carry-on bags. We caught a taxi to our hotel, which was basic and not particularly inviting, but served as a central base. We had not come to Rio to sit in a hotel room.

We had heard the warnings about violence and crime, the whispered cautions from fellow travellers. So, with watches necklaces and earrings left safely back on the boat, we walked tentatively down towards the beach, eyes open and senses sharp.

Copacabana Beach is world famous. It stretches for miles, a crescent of white sand that has graced a million postcards. Barry Manilow clearly liked it, and so did we… initially. We found a spot and the beach furniture helpers set up our umbrella and seats with practiced efficiency. It felt nice but not relaxed. The waves crashed ashore with a force that seemed to warn that things were not as calm as they appeared. We were constantly approached by salesmen hawking hats, food, drinks, ice cream and scarves. This is common in Thailand, where smiling people offer their wares with genuine warmth. Pookie decided she wanted a corn on the cob and a stick of grilled shrimps. Here however, the smiles, when they appeared at all, seemed painted on with pressure rather than pleasure. I dared not let go of anything valuable. I certainly did not feel safe enough to swim and leave Pookie alone on the sand. The tension was weirdly palpable.

Our suspicions crystallised into something uglier when a man selling Mentos Chewy Mints approached us. Mints. On a beach. Now maybe I am naive, but mints on a beach in Rio felt like selling ice to Eskimos or sand to Arabs. Perhaps they were drugs wrapped in mint clothing. Perhaps it was something else entirely. We politely declined, but he smiled with his gold teeth in a way that suggested refusal was not an option he recognised.

He persisted and feigned interest in our travels, asking how long we were staying and where we were from. I had already explained we wanted no mints, yet here we were, trapped in persistent conversation. He assumed we were American and would not listen when I corrected him. Despite telling him twice that I was English and Pookie was from Thailand, he ignored this completely. He clearly did not study geography at school as he then looked directly at Pookie, narrowed his eyes, and began chanting Ching Ching repeatedly while nodding his head and making mock Chinese sounds. He expected me to erupt, to give him the reaction his gang nearby were surely waiting for. I was furious, a hot anger rose in my chest, but I knew exactly where I was. I told him forcefully to leave us alone. He stayed, continuing his menacing performance. So, I did the only thing I could. I completely ignored him. I looked through him as if he were made of glass. Pookie did the same. After thirty seconds of our determined non existence, he got up, spat on the beach near to us and sloped off to rejoin his mint selling cronies nearby.

Had I reacted, I am certain he would have created a scuffle that his friends would surely have come over to help with, and in the chaos our belongings would have vanished and we may have ended up with bruises for our troubles. Copacabana is a stunning postcard, but the postcard does not show the predators lurking at its edges. We did not return.

Instead we found a local restaurant called Marius Degustare that was stunningly beautiful inside, filled with every manner of artifacts new and old in a joyful colourful explosion. If you ever find yourself in Rio, this is an absolute must. The following day we visited Escadaria Selaron, the famous “Selaron Steps”. This is one of the most iconic landmarks in Rio, a 215 step staircase decorated with more than two thousand carefully placed tiles collected from over sixty countries around the world. Chilean born artist Jorge Selaron began this project in 1990 as a tribute to the Brazilian people, and he continued until his death in 2013 . Pookie scanned the mosaic wall and found a tile from Thailand, a small piece of home embedded in this Brazilian wonder. Near the steps we found murals of every shape and size, the walls breathing colour.

From there we took a short trip to the cathedral of St Sebastien and also the famous football ground before taking a cable car up Sugar Loaf Mountain. The view from the top steals your breath, two sweeping bays spread beneath you as you look down through the drifting clouds below the summit. We ate ice cream in the hot sunshine, drank something cold, and started to feel almost relaxed. Almost.

Our next stop before the carnival itself was Christ the Redeemer. This for many people is another bucket list moment and we were looking forward to seeing it… Here is what the guidebooks tell you. “To stand at the feet of Christ the Redeemer is to feel utterly humbled by its grandeur. A UNESCO World Heritage Site perched 2,300 feet high on Corcovado mountain, this colossal Art Deco statue gazes out over Rio as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Its monumental scale and iconic silhouette evoke a powerful awe.”

Here is the reality. Nah. Niet. No. How this made the New Seven Wonders list is beyond me. The 2300 foot grandeur is lost to rolling hills and the statue itself stands a mere 30 metres (an 8 metre base does the heavy lifting in the statistics). The photographs you see online suggest a marvel of craftsmanship. In person it is a lump of cast concrete on a hill. You queue for hours. You are packed in with thousands of other pilgrims, to stand beneath something that looks exactly like every photograph you have ever seen, only smaller and more disappointing.

My vote for a true wonder would go to something like the Statue of Unity in India. I have never seen it in person, but rising from the banks of the Narmada like a sentinel of stone, it stands 182 metres tall, six times larger than Christ the Redeemer and is the tallest statue on Earth. That deserves wonder status. Christ the Redeemer is a tourist trap, and a poor one at that.

Our final stop before the carnival was Olympic Boulevard, where the once colourful murals remained as shadows of their former glory. Rio felt unloved…. Wow, this blog feels moany and a bit dark – not like me at all so let’s change that and tell you what Rio does well.

The one thing Rio still does magnificently is the annual carnival. We had paid for a section near the end of the parade route, and it treated us like royalty. The package included make-up artists to help you embrace the mood, clothing you could adapt and personalise, a free bar all night, free food all night, a live band between processions, a chill out zone, and free massages if the ten hour ordeal became overwhelming.

And what an atmosphere it was. The Sambadrome stretches before you like a canyon of concrete carved especially for spectacle, and when the first school enters, you understand why. The floats do not simply arrive. They emerge. They unfold. They transform the night into something that belongs more to dreams than reality.

The first float rounded the corner and I felt Pookie grip my arm. It was a towering ship of glitter and feathers, rising three storeys high with dancers suspended on wires like angels who had lost their way to heaven. The woman at the very top wore a headdress so vast and intricate it could have doubled as a chandelier for a small palace. She waved to the crowd with the practised grace of someone who knows every eye is upon her, and she was right.

Behind it came another float, this one a jungle scene transported directly from the Amazon. Mechanical jaguars turned their heads, their eyes glowing amber in the floodlights. Dancers dressed as exotic birds clustered on every level, their costumes a riot of emerald and sapphire and scarlet. The detail was absurd. Each feather had been sewn by hand, each sequin placed with intention . You could have stared at one corner of that float for the entire ten hours and still not absorbed all the work that went into it.

The samba schools themselves arrived in waves, each one outdoing the last. The drum sections alone numbered in the hundreds, and when they all played together the sound hit you in the chest like a physical force. You felt the beat in your sternum, in your teeth, in the marrow of your bones. The rhythm was impossible to resist. Even Pookie, perched safely on our balcony well away from the crowds below, found herself nodding along.

Here is a little known fact for you. Each samba school spends up to five million dollars on their parade entry, and some twelve schools compete across the two main nights. That is sixty million dollars of glitter and invention, all of it built in sprawling workshops called barracões that function as dream factories for the duration of carnival. Over three thousand artists and builders work year round constructing these temporary wonders, knowing full well that after one night of glory, the floats will be dismantled or destroyed. There is something profoundly beautiful about that. A willingness to create magnificence purely for the sake of the moment.

The themes were as varied as the colours. One school celebrated the Afro-Brazilian roots of samba itself, their float a tribute to the grandmothers and great-grandmothers who kept the rhythm alive when it was banned and persecuted . Older women in traditional Bahian dress spun slowly on a revolving platform, their wide skirts creating whirlpools of fabric. They represented the soul of the schools, the living connection to a history that refused to die.

Another school went completely the other direction, their float a futuristic cityscape of chrome and neon. Dancers in silver body paint struck poses like statues come to life. A giant mechanical bird spread its wings and fire shot from the tips. The crowd roared. I roared with them.

And so it continued, hour after hour. A float dedicated to the gods of African religions, with towering figures of Oxalá and Iemanjá draped in white and blue. A float that recreated a poor neighbourhood, celebrating the resilience and joy of favela life. A float covered entirely in mirrors that threw shards of light across the entire Sambadrome, catching thousands of faces in its reflected glow. Each one more inventive. Each one more colourful. Each one more exuberant than the last.

The schools themselves are fiercely competitive. They are judged on everything from the harmony of their singing to the creativity of their floats to the precision of their drum sections. The porta-bandeira, the woman who carries the school's flag, must dance with her mestre-sala in a display of grace that can take decades to perfect. If she drops the flag or allows it to touch the ground, points are deducted. The pressure is immense. And yet they glide through it all with smiles that could light up the entire stadium.

And the parade just kept coming. School after school, float after float, drum section after drum section. By four in the morning I was exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure. By five I had given up trying to capture it all on camera and simply watched. By six, as the first grey light began to touch the sky, the final school of the night made its way down the runway. Their float was golden in the morning rising sun.

I looked at Pookie. She was leaning forward, camera forgotten in her lap, just watching. Just being there. Just present in a moment that would never come again. That, I think, is what carnival is really about. Not the spectacle, though the spectacle is staggering. Not the competition, though the competition is fierce. But the chance to be completely alive in a moment of shared joy, surrounded by strangers who have all travelled from wherever they call home to witness the same impossible thing.

We loved it. Every single minute of it.

A Tainted Trip

In summary, apart from Ben Garland, a 6ft 5in ex NFL player from America making his way through Brazil, we were the only people we met who did not get mugged. Seriously. The couple on the table next to us in Marius Degustare whose wife had been mugged. We met a group of ladies who all had also been robbed. Then we met a girl walking home from the Rio Carnival who had been mugged the week before and only yards from police officers who did absolutely nothing. She had a tracker on her phone and showed them exactly where it was, but they showed no interest in retrieving it. She had a scar on her knee that would probably last a lifetime, a permanent reminder of the dangers of Rio. Rio is not a safe place. The Rio Carnival for us is checked off the list, but we will not be returning.

Instead we jumped on a plane to Lima in Peru.

Join us next week when we take you properly into Peru. We will show you what we thought of Lake Titikaka, and we will finally reach the fabled heights of Machu Picchu. The adventure continues, and the horizon keeps calling.