What a busy time we have had in Latin America. It has not been calm for a moment. Our arrival in Sao Paulo was already rather lively inasmuch as Iberia lost our luggage. We are not talking any luggage here, we are talking about the two cases with all our camera equipment. That somehow is not good news for a film crew just starting a round the world trip. So our first weekend in Latin America was spent chasing around trying to get some news on our two trunks. Finally, at the last minute, literally an hour before getting on the flight from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro on Sunday 6 April, we found them. Despite being told that they were stuck in Madrid, they had actually never been through Madrid. They had flown on Lufthansa, instead of Iberia, from Lyon to Munich to Sao Paulo. Adding insult to injury, the staff at Iberia in Sao Paulo were really not helpful. But anyway, with the amazing help of Michael's wife Ana, we finally tracked them down. The good news is that the federal policeman who could have very well asked us to pay for a transit deposit, saw my despair and decided he would just trust me to take the equipment back out of the country and let us through.

A quick thank you to all the mondofragilis américa latina team that greeted our crew. It was so good to finally meet all of you face to face. It's crazy when you have foreign partners and staff that you have never met. But now we have and I am very happy we did. And thanks for looking so hard for a vegan restaurant, that was great of you.

So off we went from Sao Paulo, without having done any filming, and on to Rio de Janeiro. That was quite a trip too. When we landed in Rio we were hit by a humidity wall of heat. It was in the low 30s (Celsius) with humidity up in the 90s. This did not help to calm our nerves regarding potential mosquito presence. Not sure if you all heard, but Rio is in the midst of a Dengue fever epidemic. This is what AFP had to say about it a few hours ago: "Twelve more people died from dengue fever in Rio de Janeiro state, raising to 79 the death toll from the start of the year and to 75,399 the infections by the mosquito-borne disease, health authorities said Wednesday." I think we made it through okay, though Gilles got a mosquito bite at the hotel. This said, it was several days ago and he has shown zero symptoms, so he must be fine.

In Rio, we were picked up at the airport and made our way to the hotel right on a beach. Unfortunately, we were only staying there one night, it was late, and the low cloud cover and rain meant we could neither go out or see anything for that matter. We were obviously looking forward to seeing the Cristo but that would not be our destiny. This said, we did see it briefly in the morning when our driver took us to INCA, the national cancer institute.

That's where we went on the Monday. Thank you to Rodrigo and his team for a wonderful welcome. They worked really hard to pack in several interviews into just one morning. We were pleased and honoured to interview most of the directorate including Prof. Santini. We also had some great moments looking around the INCA facility most notably their pediatric section.

From INCA, it was time to rush to the airport. Surprise, the car they provided was too small to fit our trunks. It was a hybrid biofuel/propane car with two large propane tanks in the trunk. So we had to rush to get a van and off we went to the airport to catch our rather bizarre set of flights that would take us from Rio back to Sao Paulo for an on the ground -- not off the plane -- stopover. Then on to Santiago for a couple of hours before heading for Lima.

Peru

Simply perfect. The filming, the people, the interviews, the travelling, the food, the ruins... Need we say more?

Indeed, the INEN team was incredibly prepared. Headed by Edgar Palomino, the team greeted us, led us, had interviews ready... We interviewed two ex-health ministers both current/ex directors of the Cancer Center (INEN). We interviewed the deputy director, the ever charismatic Raúl Cordero. Then we went to Trujillo where Dr. Ayala's team was simply superb. Dr. Ayala, known simply as Pepe, picked us up at the airport and from then on in, it was one busy moment after another.

The hotel in Trujillo was also great. The 'Libertador' is truly a memorable location. It's something out of old colonial Spain. Wait, that's right, Peru was... Actually, it's more like a Zorro location. It could be the governor's palace.

Filming in the ruins was also great. We filmed the intro to the history piece there.

PS. Don't forget to click over to the trip's photo gallery for images along the way...