We've just received a missive from tour leader Jessica Dennehy, who had the fortune to finish up one of our tours in Rio just before the start of this year's carnival...

"The streets of Rio were the place to be. The Sambadrome might have had the fanciest costumes and best dancers but the ‘Carnaval da Rua’ (street carnival) was where everyone could join in with the blocos as they paraded through the streets of Rio. Carnival kicked off on Saturday with ‘Cordao do Bola Preto’ – the most well known of the blocos. From before 8am the city centre of Rio was packed full of people, most of them dressed in costumes ranging from..."

Rosie Beale, a Journey Latin America tour leader and Cuba expert, reports from a sun lounger in the Caribbean... 

The beach resort of Varadero has a bad reputation amongst backpackers. It’s one of the very few pockets of the country that has been developed for tourism in any serious way, and it is home to a large number of all-inclusive hotels that seem incongruous in such a staunchly Communist country. However, having spent a lot of time elsewhere in Cuba, I wanted to find out for myself whether it was really as commercialised as I'd heard, and so I recently decided to bite the bullet and find out what Varadero is really like…