We have finally arrived in Rio after over 31 hours of travelling on coaches and buses! It is very hot, 35C and we haven't yet done much as we are too hot and tired! The past week has been amazing, very exciting and wild. We went to the Pantanal, Brazil's very biodiverse wetland area which is apparently the size of France and having driven across it I can believe that as we drove for hours and the scenery still remains green and unbroken by towns. Most of the time we had to wade everywhere as it's the wet season and so it was really flooded everywhere and we were fully aware that the water was infested with caiman, pirahanas, anacondas and fire ants but the guides didn't seem to care! Unfortunately/fortunately we didn't see any anacondas or piranha although we did try piranha fishing but didn't catch anything! We also we horse riding, on a truck safari, tubing (floating down the river in big rubber rings) and boating which were all really fun and we saw howler monkeys, caiman, toucans, macaws, capybara (like massive guinea pigs, the biggest rodents in the world),deer, foxes, wild boar, emu type birds and even an armadillo. And thousands of insects! We were hoping also to see a jaguar but knew the chances were slim, but maybe that was for the best as were were tramping around in their territory! As Lucy said, health and safety was non-existent but nobody got bitten by anything bigger than a big ant so no damage was done. The whole trip was brilliant and it was great to be in the proiper wilderness as it took us about 7 hours to drive to civilisation afterwards! We had a great group of people and from our safari we all went on to a town called Bonito where we only had time to spend a day before geting our bus to Rio but it was good, there are loads of activites youcan do there including abseiling into a cave which would have been brilliant but cost over 100 pounds to do! and swimming in crystal clear rivers but that was also 40 pounds! So we settled for the local 'swimming pool' which was another less clear river but you can still snorkel in it and it's very clean. After all that nature and space it is a shock to come to a city but I'msure it will be fun and we managed to buy very cheap tickets to see the parade from the main area the 'Sambodromo' on Sunday, the first proper day of the carnival although there is loads going on before that so we'll be busy. The computers at the hostel aren't leting us upload photos so I'll try and find an internet cafe in the next few days!