What is the mental block that prevents me finishing this accursed site? The memories are still there. Check. And the movements? Check. I still very much want to record, for my own sake, and yours (whoever you may be). Anyway.

Perhaps I don't want the adventure to end. But I'm writing this years later. I have a job again and spend my waking hours in an office. The trip is over. Hang it, I'm going to crack on. It's a good story, if I say so myself.

Most days (see the list over to your left) are described in a single entry. Many are tedious, wordy and full of the kind of obfuscatory detail I cannot expect anyone else to find interesting. Yet there are pearls to be found, even if I say so myself, and a pearl is all the more attractive for the struggle required to retrieve it from the deep. So no pointers from me. I hope you enjoy it.

Enough guff. On with the show. 'To Rio De Janeiro'.

Samantha waved me off at the front door. We had done well until that moment but her top lip was quivering wildly as I closed the gate behind me. A wave of confidence -- "She'll see me again. It's goin to be OK" -- steadied my legs. The fact that I was getting a lift to the station with friends Colin and Nikki [we'll see them again err long] helped too.

This isn't the time or place to go into the reasons for my trip, or the upheavals involved. Suffice it to say that (a) I'll never knowingly pay money to see another Disney film as long as I live and (b) Samantha's love and her spontaneous, heartfelt support for the journey made it all possible.

But... again I say... Enough guff. On with the show. 'To Rio De Janeiro'.

Dropped at Paddington by Colin and Nikki. I pride myself on travelling light (when you're married to Samantha you need extra space to carry her excess) but my big, heavy Cordura jacket, leather trousers and hefty boots were proving troublesome. Also, I admit to a certain vanity about my luggage on this occasion - hoping that somebody at least would work out what I was up to and marvel at my Incredibly Heroic Journey.

Heathrow > Charles de Gaulle (an unsightly dash through security to catch the connecting Air France flight) > Rio's Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport.

It's the sign of a cool country, I reckon, to name your signature airport after a singer rather than some stuffed shirt politician or general. Although in Brazil's case, there've been so many generals perhaps they simply couldn't decide which one to honour.

Highlight of the flight: watching AntiTrust on the inflight entertainment. Not many people have ever said that. I, however, was able to watch my close personal friend Douglas McFerran huff and puff his way through the movie while listening to the Portuguese soundtrack (plus French subtitles) in a tardy effort to learn the language. The actor dubbing Douglas' voice was gruff, manly and never once said he was in favour of bringing back the birch, which was offputting, but I muddled through.

Who else flies to Rio? Brazilians and French people, in the main, which was hardly surprising. The number of surgically-enhanced passengers was noticeably high. All the women were drop-dead gorgeous. I seemed to be the only man who wasn't desperate to light up a cigarette as soon as we had taken off. There were no terrorists primed to bring us down mid-Atlantic.

I scribbled away in the diary I would signally fail to keep going over the coming weeks. I watched AntiTrust again. I browsed my mini-dictionary of tourist Portuguese. I was finally on the way, until, finally, we were there...

Carlos Jobim International Airport; late evening
Being too smart for my own good, I hadn't bothered with any foreign currency, other than bundles of US dollars stashed in assorted hidden crevices about my person. I mean, come on -- what kind of international airport isn't going to have ATM machines in this day and age? This kind of international airport. D'oh!

Eventually I tracked down cash machines in the Departures Lounge. Three floors above the Arrivals Lounge where people who would need Brazilian currency might reasonably be. (And the escalators were switched off to save electricity). I should have done what my mum's cousin Niels did and become an airport architect, but I guess even this family isn't that big!!

Tracking down the ATM machine while lugging my oversized pack had made me suitably sweaty for arrival in the world's largest sub-tropical city. The world's greatest city full-stop, perhaps. That, combined with the long flight, the mixed emotions of departure and of watching Douglas sprouting Portuguese, not to mention a red wine or three, had dulled this Traveller's finely-honed senses.

I was suckered into a taxi-plus-hotel 'discount deal' from one of the kiosks inside the airport. The grifters in Arrivals were certainly persistant and in the end I took the path of least resistance. I'd pay for this later -- literally -- but for now I slumped back and enjoyed the ride in to town.

The Sambadrome, the Maracana, mystical beachfronts and abandoned shopfronts, bright lights and darkened favelas, all shot past. The statue of Jesus the Redeemer overlooking the whole shooting-match. The taxi-driver took one hopeful detour to his brother-in-law's street bar but I was aimed straight for the hotel. There'll be time enough to sightsee. Straight after check-in, in fact, and a quick* call to Samantha.

*"Quck" cost me �40. Damned hotels and their extortionate rates!

I was a block or two behind Copacabana Beach. Right down at the far end (as you look at it from London) and near enough to Ipanema, twinkling invitingly just over the saddle of a small hill. Tonight I walked the beachfront without being stabbed, mugged, robbed, attacked, murdered or shot.

I wanted to make that clear because the place has a bad reputation. Tonight, Copacabana was quiet, tarnished, dry, worn, comfortable. The walk cleared the pipes and set me up for a decent night's sleep and... who knows what will happen tomorrow?