It was Rio’s worst heatwave in fifty years and a violent drug war raged in the surrounding slums, but nothing could dampen the enthusiasm of Império Serrano samba school on this Saturday night in February. With just one week to go until the eagerly awaited Carnaval Parade – thousands of deliriously excited locals descended on the school’s quadrangle to watch the final rehearsal of their statuesque samba queen, Quitéria Chagas. read more (as published July 2010 Marie Claire

When the popular host of a local Amazonian TV crime show Wallace Souza made his name exposing murders in the capital city’s violent east zone, police were puzzled as to how he always arrived on the scene of the crime first. A surprise confession by one of his henchmen revealed the grisly source of his competitive advantage: Manaus’ most popular TV host was murdering people to increase ratings and build his political career. Over the next year investigators pieced together an ugly case of drug trafficking, corruption and murder which would reach into the highest echelons of Amazonian politics. read more (as published Jan 2010 Marie Claire.

At La Catedral in Buenos Aires on Tuesday nights, young Argentine people climb in through a shop window to make their way upstairs to a tango. But there are no fishnet stockings or slanted hats in this hall. The crowd wears Converse sneakers and ripped T-shirts, and they’re dancing the traditionally repressed tango with abandon. To the east, in Rio de Janeiro, dirty, pretty, rich things grind their hips to a fierce samba-funk fusion in the streets of the filthy red light district of Lapa. Their parents may be ensconced in their fortified country clubs in Rio’s wealthy South Zone. But that’s them. And this is now..... read more (as published in Australian Financial Review)

El Cigarro is a hawker that works the sand between Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. He has a snowy white beard and sells cigarettes with the cry of 'Oh Oh Oh El Cigarro', but it is not for cigarettes that he is known. He uses the sale of tobacco to set up meetings between prospective daters for the mere price of five Reals. “What kind of man are you interested in?” he quizzes a forty-something woman in expensive European sunglasses, gesturing to the bodies on the beach behind him like a sale rack. “For fun? Or something for the mind?” he asks with a tap of his temple...read more (as published in the Sydney Morning Herald)

Rio de Janeiro is a city of paradox. Stunning beaches are overlooked by favelas, glories of modernist architecture line up beside development disasters, devout hedonists join in on passing religious processions and in spite of their diverse roots and extraordinary tolerance of individuality, there is little multiculturalism...... read more (as published in Qantas Magazine)

A little Sartre with your soufflé? The panelled wood interior is not unlike Cafe Flore in Paris, where Sartre used to down his daily bottle of Bordeaux. Elegant French couples twirl Kir Royales over plates of saucisson at the front while behind the red velvet drapes at the rear an impassioned philosophical debate is unfolding. read more about Sydney's cafe philosophy scene (as published in the Good Living June 09) 

There are three reasons why people go to Tasmania. To marry a Tasmanian, eat cheese or go walking. Ironic perhaps, considering past Tasmanian residents, such as the convict Alexander Pearce who ate all five of his companions on a walk to escape the island, but trekking is now one of the prime tourist attractions of Van Diemen’s land. .. read more (as published in the Toronto Star..)

There is something immediately authentic about the antique market on Rua do Lavradio.This is old Rio. A barrio far from the madding crowds of Copacabana, where baroque edifices crumble into cobbled streets, entire banana trees sprout from friezes and the band plays a lazy samba for the afternoon beer drinkers. read more (as published in Qantas mag Oct 09)

A group of elderly astronomers are standing silently on the range around Wilpena Pound. Some are hunched over walking canes, but their eyes are looking upwards to the yawning night sky. They are searching for the Jewel Box Constellation and the Silver Coin Galaxy, but I can only make out the Southern Cross. (as published in the Sun-Herald) read more about Wilpena Pound (as published in the Sunherald May 09)

Student backpackers have long recognised Eduardo Galeano as a Latin Chomsky, but it was not until Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presented his book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent to President Obama, that it hit no.2 on Amazon. The comments pages jammed. Detractors raged that the Uruguayan writer and journalist Galeano was no more than a Castro flunky who blamed every leaf that shook in Latin America on the hand of El Yanqui, while supporters rallied around CIA conspiracy theories. read more (as published in Spectrum 4th July 2009)

In the suffocating heat of a Rio de Janeiro afternoon sometime in the 1930´s, Joao Francisco dos Santos walked into the shabby corrupt Lapa police station with a depthless rage against a discriminatory society and retribution on his mind. With a silk shirt stretched across his taut Negro frame and a gold ring engraved with St George on his long nailed hands, it is said that he single-handed assaulted five policemen who had previously assaulted his transvestite friends. Well that’s the story they tell in the more notorious drinking dens of Lapa anyway. Read more (as published in Lonely Planet)..