Beaches, and a nightlife and beautiful people.

So, we arrived in Rio and got a taxi to our hostel in order to catch up with The Irish. We were immedietly impressed by the receptionist Rene - (Patrice particularly so), who was very friendly and showed us to our room. What can I say? What ended up being our favourite hostel, started off as our worst. We were in a 6 bed dorm, and as we walked in we were overcome by the smell of smoke and the sight of a man in his forties in bed in the afternoon, as he got up, we were also impressed by the stains on his sheets. I went to complain and Rene, was very kind and told the man he was not allowed to smoke in the room. It then transpired he had been in bed for 4 days with Chicken-pox, fortunately for us, he moved out the next day, but the bed was always known as the 'Chicken-pox' bed. Nice.

Our time in Rio was mainly spent on the beach checking out the truly amazing bodies of the Brazillians. I am not kidding I have never seen so many 6 packs in my life. Very impressive. And apparently it is true what they say about the women, I can vouch for the fact that they are very glamarous, and appear to live up to their reputations! You would also be amazed by what they will try and sell you on the beach. Everything from cheese, to prawns on skewers, to jewellery to sarongs and sun tan lotion. Needless to say it was not a quiet place to be. However our hostel was a 5 minute walk from the beach, so even we could make it from our beds to there after a night out. Copa Cobana is the cheaper part of town and apparently the beaches aren't the best, but it suited us.

 One time when I had been to the beach with The Irish, I returned to the hostel to find water running down the stairs. As I walked up, I said to Jane "I bet that is coming from my room" And guess what? It was. Rick had accidently closed the drain in our en-suite and only noticed in the middle of teh shower when Patrice looked from her bed and saw several inches of water on the floor of our room. Oh dear. Fortunately the staff saw the funny side of it, though I am not sure that Rick ever lived it down!

I loved Rio, it has everything, the city and the beach and the people were very friendly. Some a little too friendly. We were constantly amazed by the sheer amount of "ladies of the day and night", who approached any man alone in a cafe or if there were more boys than girls in a group. Very scary, and Gary had a few close runnings of his own whilst we were there.

Our nights were spent out, mainly in Irish bars strangely, in an area called Ipanema. There were many fun times thee including a dancing on the bar incident (OK that may ahve been just me, but there were staff on the other bar!) We also headed out to a Favella Funk Party one night to the club that is in City of God. Before we went we were told that we were in the Favellas and how careful we needed to be as there were gangs and guns etc, but we had "V.I.P" tickets so had access to a "safe" area, where there are footballers with women other than their wives. Yeah right. I feel that this may have been more talk than was strictly necessary to hype up the tourists, as it was just a large warehouse jammed with people. After a fun mini-bus ride there, we were all ready to do some dancing, but there was barely room. The downstairs was like a sweaty mosh-pit full of grinding Brazillians, and i couldn't face that, so I stayed upstairs and spoke to The Irish for most of the night. Howver, I obviously impressed someone as I had several declaraions of love before I left the club. That or one of the few words of English the men spoke were " you're beautiful" and "I love you". I think the latter is more likely!! 

Rick headed downstairs as did Patrice and they returned with lots of amusing stories. At one point I went down to find them, only to be grabbed by a man who wanted a dance, I shook my head and went to walk away only to be held by his friend as well. At this point I headed back upstairs where I remained til 4 when we left. Not the best night of my life shall we say? And I was glad to get into bed.

We also spent a lot of time drinking in the hostel, the owner Michelle was alovely (though too thin after children for my liking!) woman who worked very hard but was incredibly friendly and helpful to everyone (On my last day she told my cab driver where to take me and hugged me goodbye!). Henry (bar tender) also made a killer cocktail, that was delicious but deadly, so we sepnt a lot of time drinking them and playing cards with the Irish on the roof-terrace. On another night we went out to Lapa, an area which is renowned for all night clubs as well as street markets and street drinking. The clubs were quite cool but crowded and I am sure that it won't surprise anyone when I say that I went home way before Rick and Patrice did!

On one of the days we headed to the famous statue. We decided in our infinite wisdom that we could do it cheaper than if we went on an organised tour. Big mistake. After jumping a wall into the botanical gardens and several failed attempts to find the walking path up, we gave up as it would soon be getting dark and decided to get a cab up. This proved costly and we entered into an argument as they offered to ait for us and charge us an extortionate amount to get back down. Again we decided we could do it cheaper. We could not.

The statue itself was as impressive as statues get I guess, it was incredibly large and surrounded with tourists. We took our pictures and then went on our way. We also visited some local markets and did one of my most memorable trips yet, visited a Favella. (Since then we have met a Brazillian from Rio, who though that this was possibly the most crazy thing in the world, but we loved it.)

It was an organised tour from our hostel, and the guy who took us, Louis, knew a lot of the locals and had a lot of intersting information, as well as what I felt a very educated opinion about how to help them. (We had been forewarned that we would visit a child day care centre and went bearing gifts of soap, toothpaste, powdered milk and chocolates, but sadly this was not open on the day we went.) We got a mini bus to the area, then got on the back of motor -bikes for the journey up to the Favella. Before we went in we were warned of several things. The first was the large presence of drug dealers who were armed and carried walkie talkies to communicate with one another around the favella. We were told how they were in charge, and had kind of formed there own policing for the community. The walls were tagged with their logos and slogans (ADA) everywhere. Before we even entered, Louis pointed out (subtely) some members of the gang who had grenades on them. Nice. Apparently 5 minutes before we arrived some of teh gang arrivved with machine guns, and no  this time I don't think they were bigging it up for the tourists.