Brazil 2016-17

Two days at the start of everything, and both of them belonged to the Paralympics.

Sitting volleyball on the first night and another session the next morning, both arenas full, tickets cheap enough to decide on the day and turn up. Around that, the ordinary Rio things done badly and then properly: Ipanema under heavy cloud on the first morning, Vista Chinesa sitting inside that same cloud in the afternoon so that I could not see the railing in front of me, then back up the next day when it had cleared and the entire city was laid out underneath. Drove west in the late afternoon, Pedra da Gávea filling the windscreen, out to Prainha where the crowds stop and the coast road gets good.

Two days is not enough for Rio. I knew that going in and it was still not enough.

Six weeks, an office, and a window facing the sunset.

This is where I lived rather than somewhere I passed through - work in the week, the city in pieces at the weekend. The Mercadão and the cathedral on one Saturday morning in September, the Theatro Municipal the week after, a churro under an unreasonable amount of dulce de leche somewhere in October. Mostly what I have from those weeks is the same view out of the flat, the same low sprawl and the same three towers, photographed over and over as the light went.

São Paulo does not perform for you the way Rio does. It takes a while and then you are quietly fond of it.

A day out to the island at the end of October.

No cars on Ilha do Mel, which is most of the point - you come off the boat at the pier and after that it is wooden walkway over the sand, or it is sand. Long enough to see why people stay a week, short enough that I did not.

Check the ferry times before you go rather than after.

Back in the city between one weekend away and the next.

One photograph from a bus with Julia, who you'll see me with in Cologne!!

Home for a few days in the gap.

Two photographs, out of the same window, both after midnight.

Three days on the island in February, with a hire car and not enough time.

The car is the thing. Florianópolis is far bigger than it looks on a map and the beaches worth having are at opposite ends of it, so the first day went east - a sandy path in through the dunes, a long beach with almost no one on it, then rock and surf and palms further round the coast. The second day was the north side, where the water goes flat and shallow enough to stand around in up to your waist for an hour with the mountains behind you. The last morning was the walk up to the lookout over the city, high-rises stacked along the water and forest in the foreground, then the Mercado Público before the flight home.

Dinner at Ostradamus, out at Ribeirão da Ilha, was the best meal of the whole trip. Book it before you go.

Three days and I still did not see half of it.

Flew back in the evening.

The only photograph from the day is out of the window, above the cloud with the sun sitting on top of it.

Four days at the end of it all, and the best water I have swum in anywhere.

The town sits on a headland with the boats packed into Praia dos Anjos and cactus over all the hills behind, and every morning begins with which boat you are getting on. The trip around Ilha do Farol is the one everyone does and it earns it - granite going straight into the sea, a cave you take the boat inside, the lighthouse up on the rock, and water that changes from navy to turquoise in the length of one headland. Walked over the hill to Praia Brava another morning and had almost the whole beach to myself. Went diving on the third day and spent a good ten minutes with a green turtle that had no interest in leaving.

Climbed the hill behind town for the view down onto Prainhas do Pontal do Atalaia, cactus in the foreground and boats sitting on their own shadows below. Drove up to the mirante on the last evening for the sun going down behind the islands.

If you do one thing on this stretch of coast, do this.

The last day.

One photograph, out of the same window as all the others, at half past five in the morning with the sky just starting to go orange behind the towers. Six months, and that is how it finished.