Well, this was it, our last stop: Rio de Janeiro. The 8 hour drive from Sao Paulo to Rio was apparently pretty spectacular, lush and green – but I slept through most of it. Clearly 10 months of travelling has started to take its toll. We agreed as we arrived that we would take it easy during our last few days, focus on soaking up some sunshine and enjoying some capirinhas. An eminently sensible plan.

After 3 months in South America we had become pretty used to speaking Spanish and whilst not perhaps as fluent as we might have wished, we could definitely make ourselves understood. We'd naively thought that with the words for 'hello' and 'thank you,' we'd be able to get buy in Portuguese – because after all, Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, right? Wrong. Actually, Portuguese sounds like a cross between Russian and Arabic, with lots of phlegmatic sounds and pronunciation bearing little resemblance to the letters on the page. We've had to resort to sheepish smiles, pointing (picture menus are a godsend!) and the kindness of English-speaking strangers.

Rio, like Sao Paulo, has a reputation for being dangerous, although our hostel host soon attempted to put us at our ease: “Don't worry, the area's perfectly safe, the dealers only sell pot around here, there's no coke anymore.” I love that this was a good yardstick of safety in the area. As in Sao Paulo, I prepared myself for the worst. Actually, Santa Teresa, the bohemian area of town in which we were staying, was lively and full of families having dinner in street cafes on the Friday night we arrived. We got stuck in to the capirinhas – well, it would have been rude not to.

We were most excited about a visit to the Christ the Redeemer statue. Our second morning dawned sunny and clear, and so off we headed to the Corcovado, or Hunch Back Mountain. The most famous way to get to the top is the cog train, but, facing an hour-long queue just to buy our tickets, we decided there had to be another way. Enterprising locals have created a mini-van service to the top, which has the advantage of stopping at a viewpoint halfway up to the summit. And air conditioning, which in 36 degree plus temperatures was a definite benefit. We opted to take the van. The viewpoint was spectacular – we could see across to Sugar Loaf Mountain and Guanabara Bay, and also the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer looming in the distance. It is possible to take a helicopter flight around the statue, and although tempted, we couldn't quite bring ourselves to get into another small aircraft at this stage of the trip. Watching the super-rapid descent of some of the helicopters later in the day, I think this was a good decision.

From here we continued up the Corcovado, bought our tickets and then took another mini-bus ride to the very top. We popped out right at the base of the statue, which was ENORMOUS. Opened in 1931, the statue is nearly 40m tall, the largest Art Deco statue in the world. I wasn't quite prepared for how big it was going to be. Neither was I prepared for the crowds. The area at the base of the statue was teeming with people, including a Father Christmas in full costume and six teenagers in Michael Jackson regalia, all trying to squeeze into the best possible spot for a photo with Christ. We didn't stick around long. Instead we headed on to the sandy beaches of Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana, for which Rio is famous. It was actually too hot for us to sunbathe, so we settled for a walk along the shore to watch the beautiful people and soak up a little sun. We saw a lot of women clad in thong bikinis, but very few were as buff or as beautiful as I was expecting. The men (mostly in very tight shorts) looked a little better, although the majority clearly indulged in heavy doses of steroids. Sexy it wasn't.

The other highlight of our stay here was a visit to the Museu do Republic, a very grand 19th century mansion which was built by a coffee plantation millionnaire, but later became the seat of the Brazilian government, home to several presidents. The rooms were spectacular, “renovated but still maintaining all original features” as most houses in South America seem to be. Most of the explanations were in Portuguese and therefore lost on us, but we were able to appreciate the room of Getúlio Vargas, President from 1930 to 1945 and 1951 until 1954, when he committed suicide in his bedroom at the palace. The room has been kept exactly as it was on that day, which is pretty macabre in itself. Worse still is the glass case in the corner of the room, containing not only the blood-stained pyjamas worn by Vargas when he did the deed, but also the gun and a replica of the bullet.

We spent our last couple of days visiting local attractions in Santa Teresa. This seemed to involve sitting outside lots of cafes and drinking copious beers. It also enabled us to stick close to the internet, watching and waiting to see whether we would be making it back to the UK at all, thanks to the heavy snowfall over Heathrow. I am sure spending Christmas on the beach (under the shade of an umbrella) wouldn't have been so bad, but after 10 months away we were really desperate to get home to our families. Lady Luck was smiling upon us – we flew home as scheduled on 22nd December.

Our journey to Sao Paulo didn't predispose us to like the city. After 19 hours on the bus over the border from Iguazú, we arrived to find the city laid low under a grey drizzly sky.

Sao Paulo is home to 17 million people – the largest city in South America – and is known as the creative centre of Brazil. Unfortunately Sao Paulo was also once known as one of the most violent cities on the planet, racking up over 700 murders a month in the mid '90s. So whilst I was looking forward to seeing some of the amazing art and architecture that I'd heard about in Wallpaper over the years, Sarah was terrified that we would end up a crime statistic.

The art and architecture we saw was pretty impressive. The city reminded me a little of Beijing in that the town planners, if there actually are any, seem to have given the architects free reign. The most obvious examples of this are the stunning Edificio Italia and its wavy neighbour the Edificio Copan, but Avenue Paulista, the financial centre of the city, was similarly avant-garde.

Touring around theses sights I don't think I quite grasped the level of fear Sarah was harbouring until we were walking around the area near our hostel the first evening. Suddenly Sarah grabbed my arm and hissed at me to put the camera away, after observing a teenager standing at a bus stop - minding his own business and sheltering from the rain in what Sarah clearly regarded as a suspicious manner

This paranoia peaked when we took another James-patented 'scenic route' down a busy road under an underpass to get to a museum. First of all we saw a gang of young girls who were 'clearly prostitutes', that is, wearing short skirts, and shortly after Sarah nudged me in the ribs and whispered that we were being followed. I stopped by a busy shop to let whoever it was go past us: it was a clean-shaven young man wearing a polo shirt with his name badge pinned to the front on his way to work. Another criminal mastermind.

To be fair to her, the city does feel a little more edgy than most places we've been. Even the supposedly risky centre of Lima felt less dangerous. Walking through the CBD at lunchtime we saw genuine prostitutes soliciting biz in bras and denim hot pants, and derelict skyscrapers home to hundreds of homeless people. We clambered over dug up pavements down empty streets. All those cues that tell you that you should maybe be watching your back a little bit were there in abundance. Shuttered shops, broken windows, bad graffiti and cardboard nests in doorways.

Once we got into the shopping district it was all different though. Christmas clearly means something here, and the just-a-pound shop equivalents that seem to predominate were doing a roaring trade. As we got further into the xmas frenzy we came across the Mercado Municipal, an incredibly grand building housing what is probably the finest market we've seen on our trip thus far. Cured meats, spices, fish, poultry and all manner of exotic fruit tumbled from a thousand well-tended stalls. Given the general level of wealth we had seen up to that point I'm not exactly sure who could afford to buy all these things, but nevertheless the market was crowded with shoppers. I think this is my main impression of Sao Paulo; the very physical division between rich and poor. The public spaces and infrastructure seem dirty and best-avoided, and the rich stay inside their gated communities, armoured cars and body-guarded restaurants, living their lives apart.

As we flew over Misiones state to reach Puerto Iguazú, it felt like we were about to land in a new continent. Acres and acres of lush green forest lay beneath us, and only at the last minute did the trees open up to reveal the runway. Technically this was still Argentina, but the scenery felt closer to Borneo than to the megalopolis of Buenos Aires we'd left only a few hours before.......

This sense of being Somewhere Else only increased once we reached Puerto Iguazú proper (which I suspect would be a rather nondescript border town, were it not for its close proximity to the Iguazú Falls). The roads and pavements were covered in the same fine red dust which coated our clothes and faces in Phu Quoc. Most of the restaurants offered patrons plastic garden chairs to sit on, just like in Vietnam. And the oppressive heat and humidity, which left us instantly damp with sweat, took us right back to our early summer in South East Asia.

I guess this dramatic change shouldn't have come as so much of a surprise: you can see both Brazil and Paraguay from Iguazú's waterfront. So it's only natural the place should be a bit of a melting pot. One really positive consequence of this (from our perspective) was that the cuisine on offer here was a little more varied, and our first lunch consisted of a Paraguayan specialty for me, and a Brazilian one for James. Neither slice of ham nor piece of cheese in sight.

The main purpose of our visit was of course a trip to the Iguazú Falls. The Falls consist of some 275 individual waterfalls, stretching on for more than 2km, which crash at several thousand cubic metres a second into the Iguazú River some 80m below. They were first seen (by Europeans) in 1542 when Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his crew came exploring. Now of course, they're a little busier.

The Falls lie across the border between Argentina and Brazil, which means you need to visit both countries in order to see them properly. Although our next stop will be Sao Paulo, we decided to base ourselves in Argentina and just do a day trip to Brazil – having heard horror stories about how expensive Brazil is, we are keen to keep our days there to a minimum!

The morning after we arrived dawned bright and sunny, and so we got one of the first buses of the day to the Argentinian National Park. The build up was pretty impressive: first the bus takes you the 15km to the park through lush green rainforest similar to the tropical Amazonian jungles further north. First impressions: it's a lot like Jurassic Park here. Next, you get to wander through part of the forest along a narrow winding path, on the look out for toucans and other exotic birds. And then you enter the Park proper. Just like at the Perito Moreno Glacier, the National Park Authority has created a series of walkways to enable you to get close to the Falls, and see them from several different perspectives. They have clearly designed the walkways to keep you in suspense for the longest time, keeping the falls hidden until the very last moment But even from the start of the trail, the noise of the water gushing is huge – it sounds like a busy road in the middle of the national park! We interrupted a coati, a cousin to the raccoon with an incredibly long and flexible snout (think Cyril and Cedric Sneer from The Raccoons, though brown not pink), prowling around on an early morning stroll. And then finally, we turned a corner, and there they were.....

The Falls were absolutely spectacular – I've never seen waterfalls on anywhere near the same scale before. Some of the waterfalls we specifically drove to see in New Zealand were mere trickles by comparison. There are individual falls as far as the eye can see, ranging from small trickles to absolute monsters. The water is a dirty muddy colour, apparently the result of significant deforestation in the region – 40 years ago, the water ran clear. This seems a real shame, although it does add to the other-worldly feel of the place. Butterflies in almost every colour, from orange, to yellow, to blue, to purple, flitted around, and we even saw some condors soaring overhead. Wow. It's really difficult to do the Falls justice in words, so perhaps this will help:



We wandered around the walkways for a couple of hours to get our fill of the Falls, one of which you're able to walk almost right up to. James and I stowed our bags and then walked towards it hand in hand, getting absolutely soaked in the process. Fortunately it was such a sunny day it was pretty refreshing! We finished our day at the Garganto del Diablo, or Devil's Throat, a concentrated torrent of water. The viewing platform is perched right at the top of the falls, so you can watch the water disappear over a ledge into the abyss, occasional plumes of spray bouncing upwards to obscure your view completely.

The following day, we were less lucky with the weather – there had been an enormous electrical storm the night before, and the rain continued well into the afternoon. Not to be discouraged (and having already bought our bus tickets for the 8.10 journey to Brazil) we donned our rain coats and decided to make the best of it.

But actually, seeing the Falls in both sunny and wet conditions made for a good contrast – and being on the Brazilian side mostly involves getting absolutely soaked at every opportunity anyway. If anything, this second day was my favourite: seeing just how many falls there are in the area really takes your breath away. Jostling for room amidst the visiting Brazilians and snap-happy Japanese tourists, we managed to take a few pictures ourselves.

The Brazilian walkways generally give you the more panoramic view, but again, at one point you can walk right into the heart of the falls – surrounded by water on every side. Looking over the viewing platform at the edge of one of the Falls, you realise there is no way you'd survive being swept away. Luckily, James kept a tight hold on me and I didn't blow away in the gusting winds.