Hey yall, good news though for all of you ready to donate to the rescue Beth fund, Jane and I have successfully joined the tour without being kidnapped or mugged! we spent three days in Madrid, wondered around the sights and even attempted to order some food in Spanish but we quickly gave up on that and met up with Elisa (friend of mine from Munich - hey Elisa) and did tapas properly on the Saturday night. Loved the hostel even though it was full of very loud Americans and the city is amazing. Then spent 6 days in Rio, up one of the huge hills of Santa Teresa. Did a couple of tours of the sights and naturally went up to the statute of Christ. We went out in Santa Teresa, ate traditional food - little funky but fun and no one was ill and round the bohemian bars where they were playing live music, was a lot of fun. We also went out on Lapa night. Lapa is an area of Rio and on Friday night all of Rio goes and drinks on the street and fills lots of seedy little nightclubs which have dressing up clothes on the dance floor, unisex toilets with no doors and the trannys get in free!!! Was a very interesting and amusing night. we even did a tour of the famous favela (shanty town) apart from the sewage we had to walk through we all enjoyed it, Jane wanted to adopt most of the babies and old people we saw but we didn't want to annoy the drug dealers!! Met up with the tour on Saturday evening, though I wasn't in the best frame of mind having found my bag was invested with termiteHard hard to believe I know but I must have put my bag up against an infected bed post cos it was alive!!! Could only happen to me but after getting the hotel to wash all of my clothes (cost me a bomb) and showering and tumble drying my bag I was the cleanest back backer there!! other then the termites and some amazing mossi bites (bitten on my bum 1st day in Rio!!) all is great and we are having the time of our lives, might not feel that way tomorrow as we are getting up at 2 to leave for 3am - not going to agree with me at all.