am I allowed to admit that I don't much like Brazil?

A spare day ... not that I was all that happy that my delayed flight from Sao Luis to Rio de Janeiro caused me to miss the connection with my flight to Atlanta (and thus also the onward flight from there to Seattle), but it has at least given me a much-needed pause.  Some time for reflection.  If only also some time for sleep, but the airport hotel - one floor above the check-in desks - is rather too noisy for me.

My colleagues are so envious - there is always a clamour to do the assignments in Brazil - but I have to admit that I am not a big fan of the place.  At least not the urban parts of it.  You're not supposed to say that, are you?  Everyone loves Brazil.  But I find it dirty (graffiti EVERYWHERE) and dangerous.  During this assignment I managed to take a Sunday off and cross the bay from Sao Luis to Alcântara, and also a rainy half-day the following weekend for a meander around Olinda.  Both are old colonial towns, although Alcântara was abandoned by the rich Portuguese plantation owners in the second half of the nineteenth century; some of it has fallen into ruin and more is going that way if restoration isn't done soon.

It's a pretty little place, and atmospheric because of the ruins, but each time I tried to venture down one of the little side streets someone called out to me that I shouldn't, that it was dangerous.  Olinda attracts greater numbers of tourists, but has an edge to it that I didn't like, and when I got talking to a guide he admitted that it was not safe, that he'd seen tourists robbed there in the main streets. Indeed a colleague was mugged on assignment in the nearby city of Recife, and one evening when we got back to a local colleague's car from the Recife office, for my lift back to the hotel, we found the car had been broken into during the day, the battery disconnected to immobilise the alarm, and the spare wheel stolen.

This a picture of some of the old colonial streets of Sao Luis, taken while I was waiting for the boat to Alcântara.  Again, a really pretty place (although you can see the rubbish on the pavement and the graffiti on some of the walls), but I'd been warned in the office not to wander around there at quiet times of day.

Today I am sat in a windowless room in Rio de Janeiro airport, check-in for my flight isn't until 7pm, and there are buses from the airport into town.  But it's not just the 90 minutes each way that puts me off travelling, it's the thought of another day worrying about my money, passport, camera - whatever I carry in with me.  A porter at the airport told me that Rio is now far more dangerous than it was when I last visited in 2003.  It's a real shame.  An amazing country in so many ways.  But one which should be so much better,