Just beautiful, an old Portuguese colonial town on the coast. We spent the day wandering around and sunning ourselves in the town then on the beach, it was lovely.

By the time we got to paraty, a beautiful Portuguese colonial town, we were absolutely shattered from our late night at the carnival the night before. The driver got lost so it was evening by the time we got in. We wandered into the town and had a look round, watching their carnival festivities. Gorgeous place.

We spent a lot of the day chilling and went to watch the united match as it was raining. We had been told that though they started parading at 10 we had no seating allocated so to get in as soon as the doors opened at 6pm. It was meant to last until 5am - as we were leaving the next day we tried to pack and nap.When we got there it was incredible. It was so long that even after they started it took 15 mins to dance up to us. These were the first 6 of the special ...

Today we collected our sambadrome tickets then chilled out again and drank with a couple we met at the hostel before heading out to two blocos in Ipanema. Good thing they block the roads for them these are even bigger than the night before, all over the beach. There were so many people it was amazing, just going to one for a few hours then the next when it finished. No pics - not worth bringing a phone with so many people there.

Today we chilled out ahead of our first bloco (carnival street party). We spent most of the day on copacabana beach, wondering around, sunbathing and buying some flip flops! It's so big and there are mountains on both sides, it looks pretty. There were loads of people selling stuff but we couldn't find rob a carnival hat that he didn't think he'd look stupid in...We went out with some people from the hostel to one in Ipanema near where we were sta...