Brazil

Rio hit me in the face the moment the sun started dropping over Ipanema. The sky turned this deep copper-orange behind Dois Irmãos and the whole beach went quiet for a second — even the waves seemed slower. I'd seen that shot a thousand times online but standing there with sand under my feet and warm Atlantic air blowing in, it felt completely different. Nothing had prepared me for how the mountains just grow straight out of the city like that.

Climbing up Dois Irmãos the next morning was worth every step. From the top you get this absurd panorama — Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon on one side, the full arc of Ipanema and Leblon on the other, and Cristo Redentor just floating in the mist over Corcovado to the left. The whole city laid out like that, ringed by green peaks and ocean, is something I kept trying to photograph but couldn't fully capture. Down on Copacabana the mood was different — more local, more alive. The Tom Jobim statue stands right on the mosaic promenade with Sugarloaf sitting behind it across the water, and every few metres there's something handmade on the sand: a sculpture, a message, someone's year painted in big letters.

São Paulo was a different Brazil entirely — glass towers and bold architecture on Avenida Paulista, the city moving fast and loud. And then there was Liberdade, the Japanese neighbourhood, where I had the best bowl of ramen followed by a caipirinha at a warm timber-panelled bar. That combination — the green lime, the cane spirit, the cold sweat on the glass — is the taste I keep going back to when I think about Brazil.