Firstly, Happy New Year to you all! We hope you all had a lovely Christmas and NYE celebrations.

Since we last updated this site, we headed to Rio de Janeiro, via a small beach town called Paraty. We stayed in Paraty for a few days and enjoyed our first proper baeches of the trip. The town was beautiful and the old town was full of beautiflu architecture and colonial buildings. The hostel was really fun too - although we did get absolutely ravaged by mosquitos. Phil had about 70 over his body and I had 12 in a circle on my forehead and a few elsewhere. It was SO annoying, especially the ones on the soles of your feet.

From there, we caught a 6hour bus to Rio (which is nothing after some of the journeys weve made) on the 23rd. We booked a small apartment months ago as it worked out cheaper than the hostels over Christmas and NY and meant we werent stuck in a huge dormitory. It was rather compact to say the least but actually perfect for what we needed. It was also just 2 blocks off Copacabana beach. We were also rather pelased when I spotted the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue (see picture) from our flat window.

We spent Christmas in the apartment as it was cloudy out. We had been given a few cards to bring out and had a few pressies for each other so spent about 5 minutes opening those and then relaxed with some drinks. Everywhere closes for Christmas so there was no fancy lunch for us - we had boiled eggs, nuts, crisps and lots of rum instead!

The beaches are right on our doorstep so weve been most days to Copacabana or Ipanema. The locals absolutely love it and whole familise go down for the day. Itś legal to drink on the beach so peolpe bring down coolboxes or buy them off vendors. We also did the main sights. We went up Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue, which was absolute carnage. There were so many people going up that we had to queue for an hour for the shuttles up the last bit and the traffic gettingto/from that point was horrendous. The view from the top was awesome though. 360 degree views of Brazil. The statue is 30metres high. and the mount is about 700m high.

We saw the Maracana stadium, drove through the favellas (the rough, shanty towns), saw the stadium where the procession starts for Carnevale in February and went up Sugar Loaf. This is the hill which looks out between the beaches. You catch two cable cars up to the top and. again, the views are amazing. You can see out to lots of the baeches, islands and harbours - from about 400m high. Again, this was rather busy and we had to queue for 1 hour to get back down from the top. You can do helicopter tours from up here but it is about 50 quid for only 6 minutes so not great value!

Phils friend from college, Russ, arrived on the 30th for a month. We crammed him into the apartment too (very cosy)! New Years Eve was awesome! We hit Copacabana beach at 9ish and join in the region of 2 million revellers to see in 2009. There was live music and as part of a tradition to appease the sea goddess, offerings are put out in the sea in the form of flowers and candles. Also, everyone wears white.

The fireworks at midnight were the best weve ever seen by a huge margin and lit up the entire bay for 20 minutes. We then headed along to Ipanema beach, where we joined a beach party and made some Brazilian friends and danced until about 6am.

New years day was spent recovering and then we went to see the sunset on Ipanema. On the way back from this we were robbed by 2 men with knives!! It was a bit of a shoc, seeing as we were on a really busy street and it had literally just got dark. Phil did the sensible thing and just handed over the rucksack and so we lost the bag, all our guidebooks, Russ' camera, sunglsases and some money! I think we are all most annoyed about losing the NYE pictures we taken the nihgt before. The bag also had the flat key in so we had a rubbish few hours trying to get that sorted with no money and minimal Portuguese speaking skills! Everything ended well. The boys sorted the police report and it is all okay now. We are all a bit paranoid now but have learned to carry nothing at all after dark. It is a shame as it took the edge off an otherwise fantastic stay in Rio and now we are all quite pleased to be heading away from the city. Dont worry mums and dads - we are all fine and are leaving the crime-riddled city tomorrow for lovely safe Saquarema, a surf hangout up the coast.

I think thatś about all for now - we will write again in a few weeks and add pictures soon.

Lots of love,

Ali + Phil xxxx

p.s. what you imagine about the beaches is true - they really love their thongs over here, and the menś speedos arent any better! We look very prudish in boardies and bikini bottoms which cover some of the buttocks!