Ilha Grande.

After events at the weekend, I couldn´t help feeling that Rio was telling me something: to get away from it for a few days. So that's what I´ve done, with Nicole and Julian, Australian friends I met earlier in the trip.

We travelled out of the city by bus for three hours, along the Costa Verde, a beautiful jungle-cloaked coastline of mountains, beaches, bays and islands. A further hour and a half by boat from the harbour of Angra dos Reis and we reached another world.

Ilha Grande is a mountainous, tropical island of unspoilt beauty. Its history as a pirates' hideaway, a leper colony and a prison for the country's most dangerous, means it was never developed or its resources exploited. 

Today, it remains almost entirely covered in protected virgin rainforest and, with 102 pristine beaches (one of which is regarded as the best in Brasil), is a little piece of heaven. Wisps of cloud cloak the tops of the peaks, eagles soar overhead and hummingbirds whirr outside the window of where we're staying, sipping nectar from the orchids growing wild opposite.

With no cars, the pace of life is barefoot, sand-between-the-toes sleepy, and it's bliss.

Ipanema to Leblon this evening.

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.

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.

Crappy photo*, but a nice tush...

And it kind of captures the moment.

Last weekend we ended up at Grande Rio, one of the Samba Schools gearing-up for carnival. 

It was packed with 3,000 people, about 100 degrees and 100% humidity inside, and an unforgettable few hours.

And at that point my mind was made up: I'm going to be in Rio for Carnival.

Now, what to wear?

(* taken with mobile phone)

The eye-popping backdrop of the city demands some pretty strong and characterful architecture, and at periods in it's history, this has been delivered. 

Rio embraced modernism with gusto in the '60's, and much of what was built measures-up pretty well to today's view of good, enduring design. More recently (1996), the Museum of Contemporary Art was also built, across the water in Niteroi. 

It's a wonderful, fun, flying-saucer of a building - although unfortunately, built with a shoestring construction budget, it's already looking a bit worn at the edges.

Rio de Janeiro: go to the top of the class...

My friends said it. The guidebooks said it. In fact, anyone who's ever been has said it:

Rio is the world's most spectacular city, with the most beautiful people - who know how to squeeze more life and fun out of every day and night than anyone else (and, from what we've seen, days can be pretty damn tough for many of those that call the Cidade Maravilhosa, "Marvelous City", home). 

And they were right.

We've lived it up to the max., and loved it up to the max. So far it's loved us back.

The people we've met have been warm and kind, willingly sharing tips on things to do, places to go and stuff to see. How else, for example, would we have ended up with 3,000 Cariocas at one of the Samba Schools preparing for Carnival? 

Rio is also perhaps the world's first clothing optional city. The locals work very hard to look good, and it pays off. At the beach, but also away from it, the sensation of one's jaw scraping along the mosaiced marble pavements is an odd, but not unpleasant, one. Really, Leblon, our nearby stretch of perfect golden sand, looks like a casting for a Bruce Webber shoot at 5 on a Sunday afternoon.

I vowed I wasn't going to be seduced by Rio's charms, but I have been. How could I not? Afterall, few other cities have afforded me such moments of wonder as this.

Yes, I know I waxed lyrically about Cape Town - and it remains one of my favourite places - but for sheer beauty, fun and her powers of seduction, Rio goes to the top of the class. 

I think I might stay.