Former soldier shrugs off snakes, scorpions and piranha to complete 4,000 mile walk

After 4,000 miles, an estimated 50,000 mosquito bites, hundreds of wasp stings and encounters with anacondas and scorpions, a British man yesterday completed his record-breaking trek along the path of the Amazon.

Ed Stafford became the first man known to have walked the entire length of the world’s longest river when he reached the Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil, where he sprinted into the sea.

“I’ve been told I was going to be killed so many times,” Stafford said. “But I’m not dead. I’m here now and … I’ve proved that if you want something enough, you can do anything.”

The 34-year-old former British army captain set out from the south coast of Peru 859 days ago, and has since encountered 18ft caimans, huge anacondas, illness, food shortages and death threats.

Stafford and a British friend began the walk on 2 April 2008. The friend left after three months, but Stafford carried on, joined by locals he met on the way.

After walking for five months he was joined by a Peruvian forestry worker, Gadiel “Cho” Sanchez Rivera, 31, and the pair have travelled together ever since.

Stafford hoped his feat would raise awareness of the destruction of the rain forest, but said he is “no eco-warrior”.

“The crux of it is, if this wasn’t a selfish, boy’s-own adventure, I don’t think it would have worked. I am simply doing it because no one has done it before.”

Stafford said he has seen vast areas of felled jungle during his journey. “It’s the people in power who are benefiting from the extraction of the natural resources here,” he said. “That’s why there are corrupt politicians and laws that aren’t enforced and loads of unconstrained deforestation still going on.”

Stafford and Sanchez Rivera survived on beans and rice, although they supplemented their diet by catching and eating piranha fish.

One of Stafford’s hairiest moments came while staying in a community in September 2008. Village leaders radioed ahead to the next community, asking for permission for Stafford to pass through their territory. “The response came back crystal clear,” Stafford wrote on his blog. “If a gringo walks into their community, they will kill him.”

Stafford planned a route around the village, but was detained by men from a different settlement. Having had his possessions picked through, the men allowed him to continue – but only if he hired guides from the tribe.

The two-and-a-half year journey, which has cost around £63,000, has been funded by sponsorship from companies and the public. Stafford has been blogging and posting video clips of his journey, his last entry stating that he had only a 50-mile walk between him and his finishing point – despite passing out while walking the previous day.

Sex workers fear spending on Olympics and World Cup might drive them out of Rio’s largest open-air red light zone

Night fell on the sewage-clogged streets of Vila Mimosa, Rio’s largest open-air red light district, and the area’s jukeboxes erupted into a cacophony of Abba, Lady Gaga and pounding Brazilian funk music.

Outside, an autumn chill descended on Vila Mimosa’s main street – Rua Sotero dos Reis – and rain hammered down onto a sign promising “streeptease”. Inside, hundreds of drunken men packed this sprawling warren of brothels and bars for another evening of shouted conversations and fleeting encounters with the 3,500 or so local prostitutes.

But the rowdy 24-hour parties that have made this labyrinth of excess notorious across Brazil may soon fall silent, as Rio de Janeiro prepares for a multi-billion dollar facelift in the run up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Rio’s business association, Firjan, estimates that some R$250bn (£89bn) in public and private money will be invested in the city over the coming six years with plans for a number of ambitious interventions, including a R$130m museum designed by Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish architect behind Dublin’s spectacular Samuel Beckett Bridge.

While most are celebrating the city’s regeneration, Vila Mimosa’s prostitutes and their employers are growing increasingly nervous that the city’s makeover may see them driven out by mooted plans to bulldoze the area and replace it with a platform for a high-speed rail-link between Rio and Brazil’s economic capital Sao Paulo.

“As soon as the rumours started going around people started knocking on my door and saying: ‘How are we going to earn a living if they make us leave’?” said Cleide Nascimento Almeida, the head of Vila Mimosa’s residents association. “The city is going to undergo big changes for the World Cup and the Olympics. [But] the red light district cannot be moved outside of the city centre no matter how shameful the government might think this place is,” she added. “The city centre is where the people come to work and when they are not at work it’s where they come to have fun.”

Uncertainty surrounds the precise nature of plans for the area surrounding Vila Mimosa. Almeida said she believed the government intended to destroy part of the area to make way for the so-called “bullet-train” between Rio and Sao Paulo, while other projects involved “a ring road, a shopping centre [and] parking facilities.”

“We’re not really sure [what they will do]. We just know that they have us in their sights,” she said.Known to its overwhelmingly male clientele as ‘VM’, Vila Mimosa is a place where money talks. The residents’ association claims the red-light district, which is open around the clock, receives around 4,000 “guests” each day. The local commerce as a whole is said to generate around R$1m each month.

For those who run the local clubs – sweaty bars with names such as “Queen 46″ and ‘Men’s 44′ – it is a lucrative business. The former owner of one club said bar managers could draw an annual salary of up to £35,000 from their “pontos” or “points” – a sizeable wage in a country where the minimum monthly wage is around £185.

Life is less kind to the women who work here, earning as little as £10 per “program”, many of them trying to pay college fees or support their families.

“[Vila Mimosa is] 200 metres away from town hall but the problems here are very similar to those of cities in the interior of the Amazon,” said Amazon-born artist Roosevelt Pinheiro, 45, who runs social and artistic projects in the area. “The conditions here are very precarious.”

Prostitution is not a crime in Brazil and for tens of thousands impoverished women – from the wealthy south-eastern metropolises to the isolated frontier towns of the Amazon – it represents a viable if often dangerous means of survival. A recent UN report suggested there could be close to 20,000 South American prostitutes working in Europe, some of them victims of human trafficking. With the World Cup on the way, Brazilian authorities are concerned about a boom in child prostitution, particularly in host cities in the sun-kissed but often poor north-east such as Recife and Fortaleza.

Life in Vila Mimosa, said to be controlled by a mixture of criminal gangs and off-duty police officers who charge a protection tax from workers, brings at least a touch of security. “Working on the streets is the worst,” said a 21-year-old prostitute who uses her salary to pay her seven-year-old son’s R$100 a month school fees.

“The Vila is calm … Here we aren’t risking our lives as much as we are on the streets.”

Almeida, the community leader, said displacing Vila Mimosa’s prostitutes, threatened making life more dangerous for the area’s thousands of workers.

“They depend on this place.The women who work in a confined area of prostitution like this are here because they don’t want to work on the kerb, where they might be seen, or beaten if the client doesn’t want to pay up,” she said.

Not all of the women in Vila Mimosa oppose the move. “I’d go happily. Have you seen it in there?” said Monique, the 64-year-old manager of one of the area’s “houses”. She pointed out onto Rua Sotero dos Reis, where more than 70 brothels cram into squalid alleyways, buzzing with gyrating bodies. “It’s horrible. It stinks and the access [for cars] is bad. Maybe the next place will be better.”

The proliferation of more convenient “saunas” in Rio’s downtown business centre had hit the area hard, she claimed. “In the olden days it would be packed now with lawyers, oil executives, all sorts,” she said, looking around at her half empty bar decorated with red neon strip lights and a clay plant pot filled with five drooping yellow roses. “Now just look at this place.”

But wherever Vila Mimosa is moved to, locals say their work will go on.

“This is the oldest job in the world. They can kick us out but this will never die,” said Monique. “You know why? Because the women here don’t hurt anyone. They won’t hurt your marriage – they’ll help it,”

“Men will go anywhere [for sex],” said the 21-year-old prostitute, who works under the name Julia and dreams of leaving the Vila to open a fish shop on the beach. “Men are addicts – this is an addiction.”

As a three-month festival of Brazilian culture opens in London, why not try out the real thing in Salvador, the country’s – and possibly the world’s – party capital

The rest of the world looks up to Brazil as world champions of partying, and by the same token, Brazilians doff their hats to the north-eastern state of Bahia and its capital, Salvador, as the undisputed kings and queens of carnival, music and knowing how to have a bloody good time.

As early as the 17th century the magnificent Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints, which Salvador overlooks and which gives the state its name) was given the epithet e de Quase Todos os Pecados (and of Nearly All the Sins), because of its reputation for decadence and bawdiness. Today it’s a funky town – tropical, soulful and intoxicating. I went on holiday to Brazil in the early 1990s, fell in love with Salvador and stayed for five years.

But unlike in Rio or São Paulo, you won’t find a hip party scene here. In fact they don’t do nightclubs or trendy bars too well at all in Salvador – the best parties take place in outdoor spaces or in the street, and no one really cares how you’re dressed – shorts and flip-flops will do. Paradoxically, the carefree spirit exuded by Bahians is the direct result of 350 years of slavery. Around 40% of all African slaves transported to the New World came to Brazil – officially 4.5 million, perhaps many more. Millions came to Bahia, the centre of Brazil’s sugar and slave trades, and today more than 80% of the population has African ancestry.

Salvador is the oldest city in Brazil and was its capital for more than 200 years, until it was replaced by Rio de Janeiro in 1763. Bahia then went into decline. Isolated from Brazil’s wealthy south, it was left to simmer under the tropical sun for two centuries, a melting pot of Africans in exile who developed a culture – music, dance, cuisine and religion – unique to this corner of Brazil, and more connected to Africa than anywhere else in the Americas. On the great sugarcane plantations of Bahia’s interior, samba slowly evolved from the ancient African rhythms. Sugar was to samba what cotton was to the blues in the American south.

Bahia’s energy is celebrated in Brazil! Brazil!, a show that has just opened in London, part of a summer-long festival showcasing Brazil’s music and arts. It is an adrenaline-pumping journey through Bahia’s musical history, taking in samba, capoeira (the fusion of dance and martial arts), slavery and even football, performed by a troupe of musicians and acrobatic dancers.

Its producer, Toby Gough, found inspiration for the show after visiting Salvador and meeting Carlinhos Brown, the city’s most gifted musician and songwriter, who helped cast many of the performers of Brazil! Brazil!, some from his own music school Pracatum (named after the noise the hand makes when striking a timbal drum), which he set up in Candeal, the poor neighbourhood he grew up in. Brown is a musical phenomenon who always has a string of projects on the go. One of his most recent was the restoration of the old gold market in the lower city and turning it into a music venue, the Museu du Ritmo. It’s worth catching his funky percussion group Timbalada there for their ensaios, the rehearsals-cum-shows that all of Salvador’s main music acts hold in the months before carnival.

The music industry in Bahia revolves around carnival (and the preparations for it) when for six days and nights every February a million and a half people dance, sing, drink and flirt their way through the streets behind trios elétricos. There are dozens of these giant trucks, banked with walls of ear-splitting speakers with the band on top. It is by some distance the biggest party on earth and I still count my first two or three carnivals as the most joyous weeks of my life.

For me the highlight of carnival is always the soulful rhythms of Ilê Aiyê, an Afro bloco, or street band, of more than 100 drummers playing in the suburb of Curuzu, miles from the centre of town. Ilê was formed in the mid-70s as an alternative to the whites-only carnival schools of the time. Only black people are allowed to join the bloco at carnival, but all are welcome to its brilliant Saturday-night ensaios which take place throughout the year. Sadly these have moved from the atmospheric yard of a colonial fort to an indoor space in Curuzu, but it is still well worth the trip out there. Take a taxi (all the drivers know it) and don’t bother showing up until after midnight.

Many other Afro blocos play in Praça Tereza Batista in the Pelourinho, Salvador’s magnificent but neglected old town, home to some of the finest colonial architecture in South America. You can still find good music here on Tuesday nights and weekends but the Pelourinho (which means whipping post) is in such a sorry state that last week the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, went to Salvador to pledge money to renovate the area and appease Unesco’s threat of withdrawing its world heritage site status.

A bar close to the old town is Galpão Cheio de Assunto (Rua Djalma Dultra 40, Sete Portas), brainchild of percussionist Peu Meurray. It attracts a cool clientele on Saturday nights and big names such as Mano Chão and Seu Jorge. If you want to combine a great vibe with music and a spectacular setting, the Saturday afternoon jam session at Solar do Unhão is the place. This former old sugar mill is a complex of colonial buildings, including a modern art museum overlooking the bay.

Rio Vermelho is the lively Atlantic suburb that is the home of the Yemanjá festival on 2 February. It’s the best pre-carnival warm-up party, with followers of Candomblé, the animist religion introduced by west African slaves, presenting flowers and other gifts to the sea goddess. On the day of the festival the small beach is crammed with devotees dressed in white offering flowers to the sea. The rest of the year Rio Vermelho’s Teatro SESI has live regional music on the patio every night of the week. Across the street is Boteco São Jorge, which is good for samba.

If drumming and samba provide the rhythm to life in Salvador, Candomblé is its spiritual driving force and practised as widely as Catholicism – from which it has borrowed certain rituals. It was illegal to follow Candomblé until the 60s, and even when I lived here in the 90s it was a difficult world for outsiders to enter.

It was impossible back then to visit genuine terreiros, or places of worship. But I found a new spirit of openness on my most recent visit, last year. At the Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá terreiro, one of the oldest in Salvador, I was welcomed as if attending a church ceremony – although any comparison with orthodox religion stopped there.

Around 20 men and women in white and green African costumes were circling the room, singing to the beat of three drums. Round and round they went, swaying to an ancient rhythm. Suddenly a woman started to jerk, shout and then spin like a dervish. An older man and several more women followed, entering the same trance-like state. The orixás, ancestral spirits, had taken temporary possession of their bodies. Their faces were contorted by the orixás, yet they were clearly in a blissful place, and for the next hour they shuffled and danced in and out of the room in a joyous procession. I was the only outsider there; it may be a good idea to take a guide to explain the complex rituals.

Afro-Brazilian tourism – for decades ignored by the white elite – has also come a long way. The state government has a department tasked with encouraging visitors to get more involved with this heritage. I tried two classes recently launched by UK tour operator Audley Travel – drumming and Bahian cookery. (It also offers Afro-Brazilian dance and capoeira but my knees creaked at the very idea.)

Down in the seaside suburb of Pedra Furada, in the lower part of Salvador, Tia Maria (yes, really; it means Auntie Mary) taught me to make a moqueca, Bahia’s delicious signature dish – seafood stewed in coconut milk and dendê (palm oil).

“The cooker’s playing up again,” said Maria pointing at the rusting four-ring hob. There are no laminated recipes to follow during lessons in her kitchen (Restaurante Tia Maria) – we just got a big knife and a bucket of fresh fish. The restaurant is the converted garage of her home – a few plastic tables and chairs overlooking the fishing boats which supply Maria’s seafood. I had great fun letting Maria boss me round the kitchen, and the moqueca was one of the best I’d ever eaten.

Thanks to the pedigree of my tutor Giba Conceição (click here to see him in action), my drumming lesson was more professional – he has played with many of Bahia’s top artists, including Gilberto Gil, now Brazil’s minister of culture. Giba taught me the basics of creating a rhythm on the tall timbal. I sounded like a kid banging a drum – and had just as much fun – while Giba coaxed such complex rhythms out of his that he seemed to have an orchestra in his fingers.

My dreams of becoming a baterista were shattered, but a couple of hours listening to Giba explain, in words and music, the history of Afro-Brazilian percussion, did lead to a tiny epiphany. I had danced many times to this beat in the streets of Salvador without ever really knowing why it made me feel so alive. One of the reasons, I now realised, is that every time you hear it, it is playing out the history of Bahia.

• TAM Airlines (+44 (0)20-8897 0005) flies daily from Heathrow to Salvador via São Paulo from £673 return. From 10 August TAM will also fly to Salvador via Rio. An 11-night trip with Audley Travel (01993 838 650), staying three nights in Rio, three nights in Salvador (with classes including drumming and cuisine) plus three nights at a Bahian beach hotel, costs from £1,250, including breakfast (and dinner on the beach), but excluding international flights. For further information visit braziltour.com

Brazil! Brazil! is on in London until 18 July as part of the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil which opens today and runs until 5 September, and at the Edinburgh festival from 5-30 August

Offering your skills and time is a great way to see new places. Here are 10 voluntourist trips that really help put something back…

Count turtles in the Seychelles

It’s not cheap, but it is probably the ultimate experience for a scuba-diving enthusiast. This is a rare opportunity to be part of a scientific research team, diving the reef as you collect data on coral and fish, and taking part in vital surveys of whale sharks, turtle, octopus and lobster species. Be prepared to spend the first fortnight in intensive teaching sessions.
Price From £1,745 for five weeks excluding flights; departures on 2 Jul, 6 Aug, 1 Oct, 5 Nov
Book it responsibletravel.com/Trip/Trip101021.htm

Help street children in Peru

If you can handle a hammer, you can make a practical difference to the lives of streetchildren in Peru. The Vine Trust’s working parties offer basic manual labour to help build and maintain centres for abandoned boys and girls, in a country where thousands of children are purposefully “lost” by parents who can no longer afford to care for them. Your two-week visit will take in the capital, Lima, and one of the charity’s more remotely located centres – which likely means a jungle expedition. And you can opt to stay on to visit Macchu Picchu and the Inca Trail.
Price £900 for two weeks excluding flights; £300 goes to building materials
Book it vinetrust.org/workparties

Crew a tall ship

Sailing a 55ft ship isn’t something many people can claim to do – and that’s the point of the Jubilee Sailing Trust’s holidays. It operates a buddy system which pairs able-bodied and physically disabled crew members in an environment so challenging and unknown that no one has an advantage. Involved in every part of running the ship, from helming to scrubbing the decks, you can take a day trip to Jersey, a week-long sail along the coast, or a longer expedition in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean.
Price From £135 for a daysail to £1,350 for a month-long passage to Antigua
Book it jst.org.uk

Join a South African village

The rural village of Mapoch, 40km outside Pretoria, was hit hard during the apartheid years: villagers were forced from their land to an area with no infrastructure and little employment. People and Places UK, which was named “best volunteering organisation” in the Responsible Tourism Awards 2009, has worked with the Mapoch’s Ndebele community to set up various businesses, amenities and education projects. Whether your skills are practical (construction, crafts, catering) or more cerebral (IT, teaching, business and marketing), they can find a way for you to benefit the village.
Price From £1,295 for four weeks, excluding flights
Book it responsibletravel.com/Trip/Trip900591.htm

Care for Cambodian orphans

Visitors are more than welcome – they’re positively encouraged at this small orphanage in rural Cambodia. Caring for around 50 children of all ages, the orphanage feels like a large family home but also offers a range of educational and vocational opportunities, including a workshop, beauty salon and an arts and crafts centre. Volunteers help to widen the children’s horizons even further with new skills and languages. Accommodation is at a large house in the centre of the town; Phnom Penh is an hour and a half away, and there are plenty of opportunities for sightseeing.
Price From £399 for two weeks excluding flights

Book it thepodsite.co.uk/projects-destinations/cambodia-orphanage.html

Preserve your environment

Whether it’s building hiking trails in Iceland’s National Parks or coppicing on the banks of the Kennet, BTCV (the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) runs holidays that offer a unique chance to get back to nature. There are more than 200 holidays a year on offer; accommodation can range from a humble tent to a luxury cottage, depending on your preference and budget, and food is included. You’ll need to arrange your own travel – and expect to cook your own meals.
Price Current deals include £180 (for seven nights) protecting butterfly habitats in Dartmoor; £570 (10 nights) cultivating orchards in Romania.
Book it btcv.org

Coach sports in Brazil

Infected by World Cup fever? Responsible Travel’s football break in Brazil offers you the chance to play the beautiful game in the most obsessed nation on earth. In one of the poorest areas of Rio you’ll help at a club specially created for children who would otherwise be on the streets: no coaching qualifications necessary, just an enthusiasm for the game that matches theirs. And it’s not just footy – other projects cover a wide range of sports from athletics to volleyball and dance to martial arts.
Price From £795 for 14 days excluding flights
Book it responsibletravel.com/Trip/Trip902407.htm

Run a stately home

For variety and value, few organisations can match the National Trust’s working holidays, where you help to protect some of Britain’s most beautiful countryside and historic houses. For £90 for a week, staying in hostel-style accommodation, the Trust offers hundreds of different activities, from goat-herding and dry stone walling to archaeology and children’s work; some also provide the opportunity for outdoor pursuits like surfing and sailing. New projects this year include tending the medieval knot garden at Norbury in Derbyshire and helping to run a food fair at the romantic Godolphin estate in Cornwall (pictured, above left).
Price From £55 for a weekend
Book it nationaltrust.org.uk/workingholidays

Wash an elephant in Thailand

You don’t have to join the circus to work with elephants. At a wildlife rescue centre in Tha Yang, Thailand, volunteers work alongside professional “mahouts” (keepers) to walk, water, feed and bathe the animals. The six domesticated elephants here have been rescued from the city streets where they were used for begging; with up to 10 others, you can spend a week or three getting to know these magnificent creatures. It’s not all clearing dung: Bangkok is two and a half hours away, and there are tropical beaches close by.
Price From £425 for one week, excluding flights
Book it thepodsite.co.uk/projects-destinations/elephant-care.html

Join a blind person in an adventure

Blind filmmaker Amar Latif came up with Traveleyes’ unique tours, in which blind and sighted travellers holiday together in equal numbers. In return for a discounted holiday, you’ll use your eyes to share the experience with your companions, whether it’s Turkey’s Turquoise Coast, the golden beaches of California or Florence’s majestic Campanile. Traveleyes has won Latif several awards, and its customers – both sighted and blind – keep coming back.
Price From £499 for 8 days
Book it traveleyes-international.com

Despite their lack of education and resources, the hard-working and ingenious people of Favela Mare have created micro-business opportunities and a thriving local economy

Four Scots held in Rio de Janeiro for allegedly stripping naked and making obscene gestures to women on Copacabana beach

Police in Rio have arrested four Scottish tourists after the men were caught removing their clothes and making “obscene gestures” on one of the world’s most famous beaches.

An intelligence official from the military police battalion in Copacabana told the Guardian the men were arrested on Tuesday after a 52-year-old woman made a complaint to a passing police patrol on Copacabana beach in Rio’s south zone.

According to reports in the local media, police were able to charge only one of the men because witnesses could positively identify only one of the group.

The tourist, named by police as 42-year-old Paul Terrance Walker, was charged with “inconvenient conduct” after witnesses told police he had stripped naked and harassed locals on Avenida Atlantica, the beachside avenue that runs alongside Copacabana beach, at about 8pm on Tuesday.

“He was making obscene gestures, showing his intimate parts to women and waving himself around,” said the police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We’re not sure what he thought he was doing.”

Ministers in Argentina and Paraguay say new film Triple Frontier could harm tourism

For many countries hoping to boost their profile on the world stage it might be seen as a minor coup – to be chosen as the setting for the next film by one of the world’s most celebrated directors.

But this week South American politicians reacted angrily to plans for Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest project, an adrenaline-filled exposé of life in the notorious triple border region between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

According to reports last year in the industry magazine Variety, the film, provisionally entitled Triple Frontier, will be an “action adventure … set in the [region's] notorious border zone”.

Variety said the film would be directed by Bigelow and scripted by Mark Boal, the American journalist whose dispatches from Iraq were the inspiration for The Hurt Locker, the winner of six Academy Awards in March.

During a visit to the region on Tuesday, however, Paraguay’s tourism minister, Liz Cramer, told her country’s La Nación newspaper the film should receive “no support” from the government and local politicians and businesses were furious.

“How much will it cost us to clean up our image [afterwards]?” Cramer said in Ciudad del Este, a rugged border town where security guards armed with shotguns keep watch over hundreds of electronics stores filled with cheap laptops and stereos. “It would be stupid for us to support [the film].”

She added: “We are all furious because it seems like they are lacking ideas, as if there aren’t sufficient themes in the world,” suggesting Bigelow should instead make a film about “the 8,000 executions on the frontier with the United States”.

Enrique Meyer, Argentina’s tourism minister, told AFP the authorities were “deeply indignant when we discovered that this project seeks to negatively portray this region”.

The border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is also one of South America’s most visited tourist destinations. It is home to the Iguaçu Falls – one of the largest series of waterfalls on Earth – and is based around three cities, Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, Puerto Iguazú in Argentina and Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil.

The region is also a notorious base for smugglers and arms and drug traffickers. US authorities have repeatedly claimed that Ciudad del Este, which has a large Arab community, is home to groups involved in fundraising for international terrorist groups.

Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities are growing increasingly alarmed at the presence of drug traffickers along their 600 miles of shared borders.

But Brazilian responses to Triple Frontier have been more sanguine. Carlos Duso, a representative of Foz do Iguaçu’s town hall, said his city was “prepared to help in any way necessary”.

“It’s just a film, isn’t it?” he told the Brazilian news site G1. “New York has been destroyed many times in the cinema and this hasn’t damaged the city’s image. We have to keep an open mind.”

This week, Lonely Planet’s Tom Hall offers expert advice on getting the best price for your flight post volcano cloud, a budget European city break and a flying visit to Brazil

Do you think airfares will rise due to the volcano eruption? We are going to London from 31 July until 9 August. I was waiting to buy my tickets until mid-May due to predictions that they will drop at that time. Do you think that is prudent, or should I buy now? Right now, for three passengers, it costs about $1,000 a ticket (£650) with all fees and taxes.
Lesley Brinton, USA

There’s an element of Volcano-mania in tying price rises into last week’s events. There will be two determining factors when it comes to how much your air ticket costs this summer. One is demand, and therefore what price the airlines think they can get away with. The other is higher operating costs caused by the rising price of jet fuel.

The advice on booking flights remains unaffected by the volcano: book as early as you can, especially if you find a deal that works for you. There are exceptions to this, but in the main they’ll be for routes and flights that are proving less popular, and a flight from Washington DC to the UK at the start of the school holidays is unlikely to fall into this bracket. This price sounds pretty good for a nonstop flight at the time you’re planning to travel.

It is likely that airfares will increase by more this year than last while the price of oil continues to rise. This may be done, as in previous years, by including a fuel surcharge rather than increasing fares. Airlines spend more on fuel than anything else and some carriers – most notably Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific – adjusted their fuel surcharge this week to reflect higher costs. If the price of oil remains high, more are likely to follow. In most cases an overall rise in the price of an airfare is a small one relative to the price of a ticket and travellers are unlikely to notice a significant difference. Shop around between airlines and consider breaking your journey on long-haul flights to save more on the price of a ticket.

It is my boyfriend’s 30th and I have promised to take him away for a few days, for a midweek city break in Europe. Having already spent rather a lot on his birthday present, I don’t want to bankrupt myself. I would ideally like to make use of a cheap flights – but I don’t actually recognise half of the locations. Any ideas for an affordable and charming place for a couple of days of R&R, food and exploring would be very gratefully received.
Emily Bevan

There are several new routes operating this summer which may appeal. Ryanair is flying from Stansted to Fez, Morocco (The View From Fez is an excellent blog from the city) and Figari, Corsica. The latter is close to the seaside town of Bonifacio. Corsican Places (0845 330 2059; corsica.co.uk) can help with accommodation and further information about this beautiful island which is still relatively unknown to British visitors. In general, fly Tuesday to Thursday to get the best fares. If you move quick, there’s a seat sale on many routes until midnight tonight (Wednesday 28 April) for midweek travel in May and June.

One city which has a growing reputation as a city break destination is Zurich, Switzerland, served by several low-cost carriers including Easyjet from Luton. In addition to an art scene rivalling bigger European cities, a well-preserved history and all the Alpine scenery you’d expect, the waterfront and riverside is at its most lively in the summer months. Designated swimming areas offer trendy bars, massages and yoga as well as the chance for a refreshing dip. You’ll get an individually decorated room with character for under £100 at Hotel Otter.

My girlfriend and I were looking to travel to Brazil in mid to late October this year. We can only go for a week. Any suggestions for our first time there?
Ulrich Reid

Like most long-haul destinations, travelling to Brazil for a week may prove to be frustrating. Flight time to Rio – where you should focus your time if you only have this long – is nearly 15 hours by plane, meaning you’ve already lost two days to travelling time. On the plus side, jetlag won’t be too bad as Rio is only three hours behind GMT. Exploring the different areas of Rio will fill up three or four days, including the beach suburbs of Ipanema, Leblon and Copacabana; well-timed rides up to Sugarloaf Mountain and Corcovado’s statue of Christ the Redeemer for views of the city and catching a match at the Maracana. For something more active, the Parque Nacional da Tijuca is a tropical jungle less than half an hour from most parts of the city. If you have seven full days, you should consider heading west from the city to Paraty, a lovely colonial city that’s close to dozens of great beaches. It’s a four-hour bus ride away. Closer is Angra dos Reis, from where you can catch a ferry to idyllic Ilha Grande. Journey Latin America (+44 (0)20 8747 8315; journeylatinamerica.co.uk) can help with flights and accommodation.

I’d like to visit Yellowstone with my partner and a small child. I don’t drive and I wouldn’t want to burden my partner with driving duties. We like walking but get lost easily, plus we’ll have a young one to keep happy. I’m not mad on huge crowds of tourists. Can you advise on when/where to go and with which operator?
Danny O’Sullivan 

I’m not sure there’s a match between what you want and what’s available. There aren’t many options for getting around Yellowstone without a car plus visiting the park during the summer months is a recipe for mixing with enormous crowds, especially around popular sights. The long drives involved in getting to and around the park won’t appeal much to a small child even if you did want to drive.

Tours for those with small children may work better but are more suited to slightly older children. Grand American Adventures (0845 313 2615; americanadventures.com)  offers a variety of US national park trips staying at campsites and lodges but have a minimum age of eight, though children aged six and seven are considered on request. Its 16-day tour running from San Francisco to Las Vegas via Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon costs from £2,229, not including international flights. Given that this trip – like other tours making the most of the region – includes activities such as hiking, rafting and mountain biking it may be that it is an adventure better suited to slightly older children.

If you were after a holiday where you could walk and explore and cover shorter distances by public transport, I would strongly recommend Slovenia. I covered some summer suggestions for travel here in December.

Polls suggest ‘pacification’ project welcome in favelas despite reports of draconian tactics

On a hilltop high above downtown Rio, an ageing white sign clings to a bullet-pocked water tank that sprouts from the peak of the city’s oldest shantytown. “Rio’s state government,” it reads. “Making our people happier.”

For years residents of the Morro da Providência have stared up at the sign and its bulletholes – the result of shoot-outs between police and drug traffickers – with a mixture of amusement, frustration and disgust. Accustomed to the iron fist of the drug faction and to sporadic and deadly police raids, the area’s impoverished residents had little to thank Rio’s governors for.

Things may, however, be changing. One recent morning nearly 100 black-clad, special forces operatives swept into the slum, occupying alleyways and sending drug traffickers scattering.

In the past the police would come to arrest or eliminate gangsters in a hail of bullets before returning to their base. This time, however, they stayed. “The police have arrived and the police will remain,” José Mariano Beltrame, Rio’s state security secretary, vowed.

The occupation of the Morro da Providência is the latest phase of a pioneering government “pacification” project that aims to liberate hundreds of thousands of Rio slum dwellers, replacing violent drug gangs with a permanent, hearts and minds-style police presence.

Seven of Rio’s 1,000-odd favelas have been occupied in the last 18 months as part of the pacification scheme, among them the City of God favela that gained international notoriety in Fernando Meirelles’ hit film.

By the end of 2010 authorities say 59 favelas will have benefited from the fledgling pacification units, freeing an estimated 210,000 people from the rule of Rio’s gangs. Between now and 2016, when Rio hosts the Olympics, dozens more occupations are planned.

“Once we have filled the first 40 I think we will have achieved a very large reduction in [levels of] violence in Rio,” said Allan Turnowski, head of Rio’s civil police. “It’s like attacking the main cell – [in doing that] you weaken all the smaller ones around it.”

After decades of lethal clashes between police and traffickers in which thousands of lives have been lost, the pacification units are being hailed as a big step forward for the city.

“We are talking about 100,000 people [who have been liberated from the gangs]. That’s no small achievement,” former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso said after a recent visit to one of the communities involved. “You have to start somewhere.

“Drug use continues … [but what is over is the violence, what is over is the organised crime, the fear, the terror," he added.

Rio's authorities make little secret of the fact that their aim is to reclaim hundreds of slums from the control of armed drug gangs, rather than to stamp out drug trafficking altogether.

"We cannot guarantee that we will put an end to drug trafficking nor do we have the pretension of doing so," said Beltrame. "[The idea is] to break the paradigm of territories that are controlled by traffickers with weapons of war. Our concrete objective is [to ensure] that a citizen can come and go [in a favela] as he pleases, that public or private services can get in there whenever they want.”

Residents of Morro da Providência have reacted nervously to the arrival of the police.

Deep in the favela, the middle-aged owner of one tiny street bar wore an anxious frown. “Young man, are we being occupied?” she inquired, hours after the special forces had swept into her slum. Asked whether occupation was a positive change, she said: “We’re not allowed to have an opinion around here. Here we have to be neutral.”

Further down the street a teenage girl responded to the same question with a shout. “Is it good or bad? It’s horrible,” she said, before disappearing down one of the favela’s many alleyways.

Independent polls have so far shown an overwhelming majority of slum residents welcome the pacification units.

But there have been sporadic reports of discontent about abusive police searches and a handful of flare-ups involving protesting residents whom the police accuse of links to the gangs.

Earlier this month 12 people were injured when a group of alleged drug dealers set fire to a bus near the City of God slum in an apparent protest against the pacification scheme. Some human rights groups complain of draconian policing tactics, pointing to the outlawing of electronic funk music parties in several occupied slums.

While most of Providência’s 4,000-odd residents ducked questions about the new occupation, across town in the Ladeira dos Tabajaras – a favela occupied in January – locals were more forthcoming.

“It’s great. Things are calm,” said Elisa Reis Oliveira, 58, who has lived in the slum for 25 years.

“Before the kids would be playing outside and suddenly they’d have to start running as soon as there was a pa-pa-pa,” she said, imitating the sound of gunfire. “I just hope it stays like this.”

“My policing is done on foot,” said Captain Rosana Alves dos Santos, head of the area’s 140-strong pacification unit, as she toured the slum with her Taurus pistol strapped firmly into its holster.

“I want the residents to trust me and to tell me their problems. It’s contact policing.”

Outside a local creche, on the edge of Rio’s Atlantic rainforest, Dos Santos, an extreme sports enthusiast, suggested setting up a mountain bike trail through the jungle to attract visitors.

Not everything has changed. In January, 77 people were killed here in confrontations with police, a rate of more than two a day.

Last month, civil police said they shot an infamous drug lord nicknamed Rohypnol during a shootout in the slum he controlled. Reports in the local press claimed Rohypnol was shot in the face. Turnowski, the police chief, said such operations would continue.

“The solution today is pacification,” he said. “[But] in the meantime our job is to keep order … So every day we have to have these operations to be able to disorganise these crooks and when the time comes occupy [these areas] with greater ease.”

Asked what was the greatest obstacle to successfully rolling out the pacification scheme, another senior government security official was blunt. “Money,” he said, warning that if the authorities did not invest sufficiently in parallel social projects, job creation and in the police officers themselves, the projects would not last long.

For the residents of Rio’s newly “pacified” slums the project is at least a start. “We’re not omnipresent – but today people can come and go here as they please; residents, the government, NGOs, journalists,” said Dos Santos.

Former president Cardoso said the shift away from purely repressive tactics was an advance.

“What was being done will not work. Repression, war, will not work. Prohibition will not work. So we have to look for alternative paths.”

In the Morro da Providência, meanwhile, police officers had begun plastering signs of their own on to the community’s walls. “A new era of peace starts now,” they read.

Using vodka or sake to mix a caipirinha cocktail has them revolting in Rio

It is the signature drink of South America’s carnival capital: an intoxicating mix of lime juice, sugar, ice and Brazilian sugarcane cachaça that reputedly counts Madonna and George Bush among its fans.

But the growing presence of alien spirits in the Brazilian caipirinha has led attempt to “rescue” their national drink. The Save the Caipirinha campaign was launched last month with an online petition that has attracted the signatures of cachaça fans, chefs and celebrities.

“We formally declare that we no longer wish to see our caipirinha being made with vodka or sake instead of cachaça,” reads the campaign manifesto, the brainchild of the Cachaça Leblon brand. “We do not accept that this drink, which is famous and respected around the world, be disrespected in Brazil.”

Purists have grown increasingly alarmed at the “pollution” of their national drink, with many bars now using vodka or even sake instead of cachaça to make their caipirinhas. The campaign’s backers claim 60% of caipirinhas made in Brazil are not in fact caipirinhas as outlined in the official recipe registered with the UK-founded International Bartenders Association.

A Brazilian law introduced in 2003 states that a caipirinha should be made with lime, sugar and cachaça and have an alcohol content of 15%-36%. The law outlaws the “addition of any substance that alters the natural sensorial characteristics” of the caipirinha, though it is unclear if the legislation has ever been enforced.

“Brazilians need to embrace this treasure that they have – the legitimate caipirinha, made with cachaça,” says Alex Atala, a top Brazilian chef who was the petition’s first signatory and is a vocal backer of attempts to save the caipirinha.

As well as reviving the liquor’s fortunes among cocktail-slurping Brazilians, the campaign also aims to help a push for new legislation regulating the production and sale of cachaça.

According to one Brazilian magazine, the campaign’s next step will involve a protest outside the Russian consulate in Rio de Janeiro, with placards reading: “Take your vodka out of our caipirinha.”