Brazil is a country that is changing from it’s fractious roots into something the world and indeed itself can grasp. It is so vast and encompasses so many cultures that it simply isn’t the samba dancing, football playing image that we drink in as it’s summary in the west.

Brazil is a lot more complicated and at the same time strangely simple. I found myself drawing parallels to the U.S. with large chunks of the country growing too quickly to allow for any deep infusion of flavour, but there is a wisdom here that comes from those Portuguese navigators, African wizards and Indiginous shamans that wears well and carries Brazil through.

I like Brazil. A lot. it has the freshness of a new nation, people can be open and breezy in the way Australians or New Zealanders can be, they can chat away to you even if you can’t speak the language perhaps because simply getting along is the goal, there are more important things than pragmatism. There also doesn’t seem to be as much of the ratial segregation that exists in the Spanish latin countries, the only thing that segregates is ambition and beauty.

Here perhaps is Brazil’s achiles heel. I heard that Brazil is number one in the world for plastic surgery, it must be hard to be at the bottom of such a beautiful heap poor or not. However in contrast to somewhere like the UK old people and the imperfect seem to be looked after and respected, let’s hope that they ride the storm of consumerism with that left intact.

But what do I know, I’m in love with the wonderful people we met, flattered by the hospitality and more than rested, so it’s off to Uruguay we go.