Arrived in Rio feeling pretty fresh, and already we've noticed the difference in prices, everything seems so expensive here. Also noticed that all Brazilians are total posers. They would put Zoolander to shame with some of the shocking pictures we've seen being taken, also the fact that they all love to wear Speedo's disgusts me, Speedo's should be outlawed.

Took an expensive taxi to our hostel, Brazil Hostel, seemed pretty nice and was pretty cheap for Rio standards. First thing the guy was telling us was there was a decent chance you might get robbed here, even though we were staying in one of the safest districts, nice. He told us not to take our camera out with us unless we really needed it and carry some robbing money in a separate pocket, cant wait. Was pretty late so just headed to the shop to buy some vegetables to make some soup, watched TV for a wee bit then headed off to the scratcher.

Decided to do all the touristy things today, caught the bus, which was like sitting in a F1 car, down the base of the Christ the Redeemer mountain. They totally know how to rip you off for things here as it cost us about 20pound each to look at a statue, was worth it though as the view was amazing from the top and the statue was impressive as well. Got completely fed up with annoying folk copying the Jesus stand all the time, anyone who does this is a plank in my book.

The Statue was a lot smaller than I originally expected, all the pictures you see make it look so big but it's only about 40metres high. Grabbed some extortionate food just to get our moneys worth at the top and then headed back down and caught the warp speed bus back to the hostel to eat the left over soup we made the night before.

We got speaking to a girl in the hostel who was headed down to Copacabana Beach to met some friends that were in Rio, we decided to follow her down and see what the beach was like, got off at the start and walked along the beach for a bit. Met up with the girls friends who turned out to be 'actual real lesbians' amazing!! Didn't have any swimming stuff with us so like a couple of children we 'paddled in the water for a while. The beach was nice but to crowded for my liking.

We were getting a little bored on the beach so Brid and I decided to got see the other really touristy thing in Rio, the sugar loaf mountain, whys its called this I've no idea but I'm sure wikipedia will tell you, it has 2 sets of cable cars up 2 massive mountains, its also quite expensive at around 18quid I think. We headed up just before sunset to see if we could get some nice pictures, the view was even nicer than the Jesus mountain, you could see the whole city, some of it from the Jesus mountain was blocked by mountains.

Stayed till leaving time as we got speaking to 2 girls that were staying in our hostel, we ended up getting the cable car back down with the staff as the place was closed. The cable cars were pretty good, almost all glass so you could see out the bottom, almost.

Headed back to the hostel with the girls and had a couple of light ales, there was a bar just up the street with a live band but seeing as they were charging 5quid each cover charge we decided against it. Looked for some other bars but nothing was really happening as it was a week day. Grabbed some food and headed back to hostel for some more drinks. Did also notice the sheer number of hookers in Rio, a candy run here would be good.

Next day we went into the centre of Rio for a look, spent about 2hrs trying to find a bank machine, none of the banks seem to take Visa here, annoying. Being cultured we went to McDonalds for lunch which turned out to be more expensive than back at home, 5 pounds for a normal meal.

Caught an Ancient tram that runs from the city centre up through one of the districts beside us (santa teresa )and walked back to our hostel. Supposedly if you hold on to the outside you don't have to pay but we didn't fancy this as it was going over 20metre bridges some of the time. Later on we decided to go to the cinema to see batman as I wanted to see it for ages, had a really nice baked tattie from a stall beside the cinema. Had a couple more drinks in the hostel, we decided to head off to an island called Ilha Grande which is about 3 hrs from Rio, its supposed to have some really nice beaches, and seeing as there are no cars on the island hopefully it wont be to busy.