I knew things were going too well.

I have been so careful, but at the beach today I had my shorts stolen - containing the key to my apartment, some money, a couple of bank cards, my Brazilian mobile phone and my small camera. They were canny - the things were taken from right under a friend´s nose.

Presently, the biggest annoyances are not being able to get into the flat and the loss of my camera (although I had downloaded pretty much all the photographs from it).

A friend, Alan, is still here and so I have borrowed some cash and his local mobile phone. I´m now killing time - in just a vest and trunks - in an internet cafe while I try to get hold of the owner of my place, to pick-up a spare key. Thankfully, no one bats an eyelid around here when you´re wearing just beachwear, even at night!

Sigh.

Back at the beach.

Weather or not.

It seems trite to include an entry about the weather, but I will - because everyone has commented on how incredibly lucky we´ve been to have three, pretty much dry weeks.

It is the rainy season, and last year it poured heavily throughout Carnival. Yet in the time I´ve been here it´s rained just once (albeit torrentially and for twenty-four hours); the rest of the time the skies have been clear and temperatures perfect. Apparently, that is unusual.

Sugarloaf. Finally.

After several rather lazy, post-Carnival days (ie. recovery), early yesterday morning I finally dragged my backside up Pao de Acucar, or Sugarloaf.

It´s reached by two separate cable cars, with a smaller mountain between. At the 400m summit trails climb through lush tropical jungle where butterflies the size of your hand float past, and orchids and bromeliads cling to the trees.

I´ll let these pictures speak for themselves as I´m running short of superlatives for this place.

I am destroyed.

I can't believe that anywhere else knows how to party like this city: four days and five nights of music, dancing and fun in superb weather and one of the world's most perfect settings. It's been unforgettable, but I am exhausted.

A pool party last night with friends at a beautiful venue by Rio's lake, Lagoa, surrounded by palm trees, was one of the best nights out I've ever had: perfect weather, perfect music and a perfect crowd. At midnight a fireworks display over the water marked the end of Carnival.

The beautiful city has an ugly face.

Thankfully, I have experienced only kindness from the people I've met in Rio. However, a frightening incident that some British guys recounted to me has reminded of this place's reputation as one of the world's most dangerous and corrupt cities, and that every experience it offers errs on the extreme.

On leaving a club last Thursday morning they got into a taxi to go to their hotel; they immediately knew something was wrong. The windows wouldn't wind up, the driver wouldn't use the meter, and within seconds police were around the car and guns were being pushed to their heads.

They were taken to an ATM and 5000 Reis, about 1500 GBP, was demanded from them. They negotiated down to 2000 R, paid and, this being Rio, the police dropped the boys back at their hotel afterwards.

In a place where lawlessness is common and authority figures cannot be trusted, the incident was apparently as scary as it sounds.

Rio is a place of such extremes and contrasts, a hyper-city on speed: the most beautiful and ugly; the richest and poorest; the most privileged and foresaken; and the most compassionate towards human life, and the cruelest. Moderation is not something it has time for.

Ultimately this city seems a distillation of humanity's greatest achievements and strengths, as well as its worst failings and weaknesses.

Carnivaaaaaaaaal!!!

It's half six in the morning and for the fourth consecutive day I've got home at daybreak, again taxi-ing through the city at dawn as sunrise casts soft pinks and oranges across the mountains and misty harbours. 

I am back from the Sambodromo where, surely, one of the greatest visual spectacles on earth unfolded in front of us.

Nothing - absolutely nothing - prepares you for the Samba schools astonishing displays of costumes, floats and choreography, and the electrifying atmosphere. And any preconceptions are quickly blown out the water.

14 schools compete for an hour each over two nights, starting at nine and finishing at six the next morning. Each parade is launched with a massive fireworks display.

The scale is unimaginable - the concrete catwalk alone is three quarters of a kilometre long - and tens of thousands of dancers and performers parade to loud, intoxicating samba beats, while nearly a hundred thousand people cheer them on from the stands of the purpose-built stadium, the Sambodromo.

Floats the size of large houses, with animatronics and fountains; spectacular Amazonian women (I think) in feathers and sequins on 8 inch heels, shimmering ahead of their schools; beautiful bronzed men gyrating to the rhythms; bands of musicians, 300 strong, beating drums, and thousands and thousands of choreographed dancers. 

The desfile, or parade, is an electrifying and relentless spectacle - it's everything you've seen broadcast around the world but a thousand times more incredible. 

There were moments of such overwhelming beauty and wonder that at times I stood with tears in my eyes. Like everything about this city, it is over the top and out of this world - and something to be experienced once in a lifetime.

And now I need some sleep.

(I'm dissappointed with these photographs. My little camera didn't handle the situation very well and the pictures do the event no justice whatsoever).

Return to Ipanema.

OK, I've tried to put up with the all-night street noise, the scratchy nylon sheets and the constant slight fear of being a crime statistic (the recent armed raid on a hostel that made the news - in which residents were intimidated with grenades, tied-up and had their belongs stolen - happened around the corner); but waking-up to a cockroach the size of a rodent waving at me from the bedside cabinet was the last straw.

I've got out of the Copacabana apartment - at least for the few days of Carnival - and am now renting a great little place one block back from the beach in Ipanema. It's perfect. It came my way through someone I met here, and I plan to rent it again in the future. 

What was I saying about meeting great people here?

The world's biggest party. Full stop.

So what happens when one of the most populous, sexy and fun-loving nations on earth decides to party?

Well, naughty things happen.

The celebrations have only just begun, but already make Notting Hill look like a Women's Institute Convention. The sheer numbers of people, sound systems, costumes and the appetite to have fun is something else.

Fairy wings, huge wigs, deely-boppers, you name it, it's walking the streets. Straight boys wearing dresses also seems to be part of the deal - on top of legions of transexuals strutting their stuff (why are there so many of the latter here?) 

And I've seen more Amy Winehouse look-e-likies than you can shake a crack pipe at (that girl does export well).

Generally, wearing very little is the norm - and given how perfect the weather has been, and how perfect many of the bodies are, why wouldn't you?

Streets are closed-off across the city and huge sound systems blast out deep, infectious Samba beats, getting the crowds going. These mobile street parties, or blochos, are at the heart of the celebrations and are debauched.

Anything goes, and does, and no one bats an eyelid.

For about four days this goes on and of course it gets VERY messy - but that's Carnival.

Rio's Museu de Arte Moderna, or MAM, was built in 1948 and a visionary building in its time. With gorgeous views across the water to Sugarloaf Mountain, it squats amongst the trees of Parque de Flamengo, designed by the brilliant Brazilian Landscape Architect, Roberto Burle Marx.

Lapa.

Lapa is an area of central Rio. It's a part of the city that has seen better days but is slowly getting a new lease of life as antique shops, trendy retro furniture stores and bars open up. It's fairly sleepy during the day but a different world at night - when many of the buildings with their crumbling facades throw open their doors for big samba parties.

Somewhat taxing.

As you may have gathered, I'm taken with Rio - but I've found something about the place I don't like: the taxi drivers.

They often don't know where they're going, are rude and reckless, take longer routes than necessary and don't give back change - taking a ridiculously large tip. Sometimes, they quite simply refuse to drive you to an address you've given them. If you challenge them, they get very tricky.

And I know it's Carnival, so everyone's up all hours, but the fact that last night I had to prod one of them awake at traffic lights we'd stopped at, didn't help my view.

Spoilt.

Today I picked-up the keys to the Copacabana apartment I'm renting for the next week.

I've been spoilt since I got to Rio, staying in Leblon and Ipanema, the city's nicest and safest neighbourhoods, moments away from some of the world's most gorgeous urban beaches.

Both are slick, sophisticated and well-kept; adjectives also successfully describing those who live there. Copacabana, for the most part, has a glamorous reputation far beyond the reality of the place. The beach is stupendous (above), but it's a slovenly and tatty neighbourhood where naive and overweight tourists stay at hotels that just can't be bothered.

Although I'm just one block behind the famous sea-front Copacabana Palace Hotel, 'nothing special' generously describes the flat. However, at rather short notice there was very little available and it's a base and inexpensive compared to any of the hotels in any of these areas over the next week.

And I don't plan to be spending too much time there anyway.

The kindness of strangers.

I've said it before, but the people I'm meeting on this trip are ensuring that already wonderful destinations are proving even more rewarding and fun. Rio has been no exception. 

Knocking on wood as I write this, so far I've met only kind and generous Cariocas who, for example, have invited me to join them for drinks, dinners and parties - and through them I have met others. Very quickly, they have become friends. 

The Sambodromo is an incredible Carnival experience. It provides much of the colourful imagery of the celebrations broadcast around the world: tens of thousands of people partying as the most extravagant floats on the planet go past. But it's not necessarily something I'd do on my own! So, an invitation last night to join some guys 'in the know' who are going on Sunday is very welcome indeed. 

(I should add, however, that I'm keeping my wits about me and being careful not to let my guard down too much in this wonderful and highly seductive city).

Ipanema, 7pm this evening.

Returned to a clearer, cooler and less humid Rio than we left behind last week. 

Perfect.

It's great to be back.