Rio is both like everywhere and nowhere that you have ever been.

The idea of the place had long loomed large in my internal world of forms. So extraordinarily iconic. To my experience, the final continental frontier.

I had never been to South America, but then again nor have I been to Oceania or Antarctica. Perversely, though, I feel I know them regardless.

Antarctica as like the Arctic, just bigger and whiter, and vaster and bluer. Australia as the UK, but vaster and redder, with friendlier people but freakier critters.

But what on Earth was South America like, I often wondered. Half-formed notions percolated of the Amazon, and its vast greenness, and cartels and gangs, and too a notion of the world’s most passionately assured peoples, who would dance nearly nakedly down Copacabana till the sun poked its head over the cresting morning waves.

Somehow, Rio conformed to and exceeded each one of these notions: delivering on every cliché while somehow transcending them all.

…

Nestled on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, the city is so far geographically distanced from the Anglo-speaking world, that Miami is closer to London than it is to Rio. As the conquistadors first encountered then sailed on past this point, they must have been harbouring well-founded fears that they would soon drop off the side of the earth.

Once arriving, it is not at all surprising that two Wonders call this city home: the imperious and congruous Christ the Redeemer, one of the Seven Modern Wonders, and the Harbour of Rio de Janeiro, one of the Natural Wonders.

A harbour, almost a perfectly circular ring nearly 30 miles in diameter, as if God had pressed his thumb into it to mark it as a nice place he’d return to later. Sugarloaf Mountain, the iconic and noble sentry, juts out on one side, providing a watchful gaze across the bay.

Around the harbour, and across the sprawling city, jut enormous mountains, each bedecked with forest and flora so vibrantly green that it makes you salivate. Jurassic in their appearance, these forest spires speak more to pterodactyls than the twenty-first century.

The favelas – equally beautiful – clamber atop one another like ants forming a bridge of bodies, climbing up ever higher. Multi-coloured, toytown, charming and Balamory-esque. Poverty and desperation made architectural poetry.

I write today on the tube, from Heathrow to Hammersmith, and as I finish this sentence, I glance up from my laptop to see a man wearing shorts,with a tattoo on his calf. The image encapsulates the idea of the above sentence perfectly. Three people, naked and identity-less, climbing atop one another. Entirely self-serving yet codependent, they coalesce into an image of balanced unity.

This man has just sat down next to me and he has tattoos climbing his arms too. I don’t like these so much.

The favelas’ balancing act is much like Rio’s tightrope balance between nature and humanity. It is a dance, and one performed so elegantly by the city’s planners.

Rio is an absolutely enormous place. Not in the way the enormous LA sprawls and seeps; nor alike how Delhi’s sense of enormity is born from its frantic fervour. Rio is enormous in the way of consciousness – irreducible, wonderous, and impossible to contain.

The day before we arrived, Lady Gaga held a concert on Copacabana Beach that attracted 2 and a half million attendees. Inconceivable anywhere else, but entirely comprehensible for Rio. The beach showed no sign of disrepair; indeed, the only signs of her presence were the tour t-shirts adorning so many revellers’ torsos. The city had swallowed the spectacle whole, and was hanging around whilst asking for more.

In the streets of the city, the European presence is palpable. Echoes of Saigon and Sevilla.

A grid system featuring buildings all three stories high, all adorned with ornate stonework detailing. The street-lining trees spill forth a shaded canopy, over the bars and café’s which quietly flow out of their open walls.

It felt safe. We walked everywhere, but prudently didn’t go into the favelas. We used Uber exclusively for the longer distance trips, which proved an indispensable tool and pretty safe too.

The ocean is like no other I’ve known. I imagine the only other would be the coast off of Cape Town. Rolling and frothing, pink at sunset, and of a quietly noble assurance.

The sand is white, and there are brilliantly constructed multi-kilometre-long asphalt paths that skirt the beach’s edge for runners and cyclists.

I was not alone on this South American adventure. I had brought my Dad along with me as a cling-on, and he too had never been to Rio.

We spent one morning climbing the mountain on which The Redeemer stands, a switch-back saturated slog through dense jungle. Our shirts bled sweat in the tropical heat, as our minds soaked up the beatitude of the forest. We saw few others – almost all visitors take the train up, which we took down – and gained 700 metres in elevation across 3 miles.

The statue really is deserving of its Wonder status. Imperious, embracing, accepting. Physically stunning, and placed in one of the world’s most stunning locations. 360 views of the entire city – including the world famous Maracanã Stadium, designed to seat over 200,000 people.

Dad had booked up some meetings on one afternoon in the financial district, with some international colleagues and clients, and I took the opportunity to walk around the area.

The architecture was resplendent. A concrete circus seemingly adorned a car park; closer inspection revealed a cavernous, Brutalist cathedral, featuring thousands of stained glass windows. A low-slung viaduct, of Victorian design, cruising across an open square.

Parts of this district were crumbling: imagine a theme park, with sets designed to look like the love child of a Western boomtown-turned-ghost-town, and a hurricane-torn Venetian New-Orleans. I found a bar, and drank a big icy beer whilst watching some Champions League football. Very cool.

One of Dad’s clients had recommended a steak place. I’m still veggie, but when in Rome, go see the gladiators – and when in Rio, gorge oneself in a Brazilian steakhouse.

My goodness. It was perhaps the best food I’d ever eaten. Perhaps the best view I’ve eaten in front of. And without question, the most delectable steak I had ever tasted.

Named Assador Rio’s, we sat on the ocean front looking across the bay and the night, with Sugarloaf Mountain on our right-hand side. Waiters would circulate, slicing off pieces of the most succulent, perfectly cooked cuts of meat. To eat it felt like having your neural synapses coated in butter, then increasing the voltage of the electricity flowing through them.

The night before, we had taken the cable car up to the top of the Sugarloaf. There was a DJ up there, and the vibes were immaculate. Sun setting across the harbour, the lights of the city tuning in, and the darkness split by the figure of Christ, illuminated and floating in the sky. Ethereal, maximal, magical.

It was the coolest exploring this magical city with Dad. So many essential conversations – equal parts vital and nonsense – and so much good laughter. He’s a real cool guy, my dad.

There’s a rap duo named Clipse, formed by brothers Pusha-T and Malice, and last week they released a phenomenal album. The opening track is titled “The Birds Don’t Sing”, and features the pair going back-to-back about the unfillable hole left by the death of their parents.

The birds don’t sing; they screech in pain. Where the rest of the album is gritty, spooky, heady, the opening track is plain vulnerable. Two men, in their forties and fifties, who want nothing more than a hug from mum and Dad.

Listening to it on the tube back to work this morning, the closing lines – a sample of Stevie Wonder’s spoken word – struck me.

“Remember those who lost their mothers and fathers

And make sure that every single moment that you have with them

You show them love

You show them love

You’ll see”

I love my parents. Entirely, dearly, honestly, unreservedly. For their sake, I hope my brothers and I outlive them, but equally I cannot conceive of my life without them. They have been here all along, from my first breath to the one I take as I write this sentence. I’m living at home again and we’re thereby spending much more time together.

And that is amazing.

But the truth remains, that there is an absolute number of how many more days we will spend together. Only once this final day passes will I know what this number is, but it is determined with such certainty that it may as well be chiselled into granite.

Dad and I flew 10,000km across the world, and found some of the most extraordinary culture either of us had ever known. Rio is an end in itself. Exotic, refined, bustling with life and colour, horizon-expanding. Extraordinary.

But those 72 hours were transcendent not for the setting, but for the uniqueness of the unabridged nature of the time that it afforded Dad and I. Discovering a new world alongside each other, and venturing through newness together

Whether in Rio or Redhill, Southend or the Sierra Nevada, you’ll take yourself with you wherever you go. Your thoughts, anxieties, insecurities, worries. And as such, it is important sometimes to go alone.

To stretch and flex the frontiers of your being, and redefine where you end and where the world begins.

But what you’ll find there often is the knowledge that you already have everything you wanted. Love, and people you love, and people who love you.

A life well-lived is one well-shared. No man is an island, and no life is a movie in which you are the main character. You are instead the screen onto which this is all being projected. And a film populated by a colourful cast is always more interesting than B-roll footage of beaches and jungles and steaks.

As the skyline falls and we try to make sense of it all, endeavour to fill your life with those whom you love most dearly. As the curtains close; as the mushroom cloud blooms on the horizon; as the fault line splits and welcomes you into the abyss…

Feel the warmth of love’s embrace wherever you can. Give yourself up to it. And give yourself up to those you hold dearest. You never know when the last time will be.