Can you spell desiccated?

Well we are at the last bit of our visit to Rio de Janeiro, and preparing to travel back home, before we go we are invited to dinner in Leblon, which has the second most expensive real estate in the world.

So we decide to fill our only day off by travelling on the cable car up to Sugar Loaf. It has been such a busy week that me and Ioan are shattered, so to keep our spirits up we start to play Parallel Universe, where we see people who look like people we know, so on top of Sugar Loaf, high above Rio we see, Christine Pritchard, Jeremy Turner, Roger Burnell, and 36 Dyfan Jones's.

We stay up the top to see the sun set over Rio, and then we make our way down to have another lovely evening with people who we have just met this week. Our host lives in an apartment in Leblon. The views of the city are once again stunning. We have dinner on the terrace flanked by the two most iconic views of Rio. Alison our host runs an agency for hotels and B&B's in Brazil, which are off the beaten track - www.hiddenpousadasbrazil.com.
The guests at dinner are chatty and funny and the conversation jumps from Wallace to pop up parties, facebook and the spelling of desiccated.

D-E-S-I-C-C-A-T-E-D. Desiccated. I'm in a spelling bee competition!

I win!

We discuss stories and myths from Brazil, which would make great plays for young people. There are lots of ideas for me to follow up when I get back home.

Our flight is late on Saturday, so our last couple of hours in the city are spent at Tijuca National Park, it is an 8000 acre rainforest and is home to hundreds of species of plants and wildlife, many threatened by extinction, found only in the Atlantic Rainforest (Mata Atlântica in Portuguese). After all the original forest had been destroyed to make way for coffee farms, Tijuca was replanted by Major Manuel Gomes Archer in the second half of the 19th century in a successful effort to protect Rio's water supply.

A jeep picks us up at our hotel, and take us through some of the most affluent areas in the world alongside the poorest areas. This happens a lot in Rio. I can't quite get my head around it. We pass Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro. It has a estimated population of 250,000. It clings to the hillside with unparalleled views of the city, and just a kilometer from the beach.

We climb high into the forest, and it is stunning. Our guide is really knowledgeable and points out such plants such as tobacco, coffee and bromelia, which grows without roots, and grows nearly everywhere in the forest and even on electric cables. He shows us a tree called the Embaúba, where the trunk is hollow and ants live inside and drain the plant of chlorophyll, which then turns the leaves white. He shows us a tree called Pau-Brasil. When Portuguese explorers found these trees of a deep red hue inside on the coast of South America, they used the name pau-brasil to describe them. Pau is Portuguese for "stick", and brasil is said to have come from brasa, Portuguese for "ember". Brazilwood trees were such a large part of the exports and economy of the land that the country which sprang up in that part of the world took its name from them and is now called Brazil.

I ask if thats where the word brazier comes from. No one answers. No one is interested.

Brazier. B-R-A-Z-I-E-R. Brazier.

I take the opportunity to film video footage in the rainforest for our autumn production of The Butterfly Hunter and for our online resources. I have high expectations and I imagine that I will be deafened by the sounds of birds and animals, and that I will be surrounded by butterflies and insects.

But it is silent, no sounds of nature at all, apart from a little woman in our group who is constantly talking!

And it's not me!

Ioan points out a huge butterfly (the only one) swooping around. I try to capture it on film but its really difficult. It flies high into the canopy, where it knows it'll be safe.

I think of Wallace and how difficult it must have been for him, mid 19th century, trying to capture these insects. There were probably more around in his day...

We get back in the jeep, and travel back into the city. The sun has come out, and its very hot, we pass Ipanema and Copacobana beaches, where people are out enjoying the winter sun!

We return to Santa Teresa and pack for our journey home and we wait for the taxi to take us to the airport.

We bid farewell to Bill and Sue our fantastic hosts at Um Meia Tres- www.hotelinrio.net. Promising to return.

We arrive at the airport and reminisce about our arrival a week ago and how apprehensive we were about arriving in Rio, and how misguided we were about the place.

Suddenly we see two versions of my mother! The Parallel Universe game continues and we laugh ourselves silly out of Rio!