(Just a little pre-p.s., if anyone wants to be inspired to travel, or thinks they can't make a difference in life, there's a really great blogpost about an incredible experience 3 (i think) welshmen and women had in Australia. Its amusing, and inspirational - check it out: http://www.ascheekyasyoucant.blogspot.com)

Rio has been absolutely fantastic, the perfect ending to an amazing trip! Its a fantastic city to fly home from, with the beach culture, and some of the most amazing sights. Em couldn´t imagine a more perfect end as she got to tick off one of her life ambitions - to see the Christ the Redeemer, so its been pretty awesome.

We explored the beaches. Staying in Copacabana, the beach was only about 3 blopcks from the hostel, and is just an amazing mass of beautiful white sand and beautiful people! Saw some of the s ights Rio has to offer. A lot of people have told us not to bother with Corcovado mountain and Christ the Redeemer as he is alwasy covered in cloud, but we were lucky and had a beautifully clear day, and it was worth every penny. The views from the top of the statue were just incredible, as you got to see Sugar Loaf mountain, and the whole of hte city. Corcovado mountain separates the Zona Sul (south) with the Norte (north) and so you can see all the beaches, and to the North, the favellas, Maracana Stadium, and right out to the bay in between. I really don´t think we´ve been to a more beautiful city. La Paz was the most dramatic city we have been in for landscape. but Rio is by far the most impressively stunning place i have ever been! The statue itsef was so imposing with the sun behind Christs head, and just completely left Em insanely happy as she has wanted to go to Rio and see the statue since she was a kid!

Sugarloaf mountain also offered pretty insane views. Perched right at the side of the beautiful bay, it takes two cable cars to get to the top and its simply stunning. You can see Christ and the Tijuca national park (jungle, mountains, the usual amazing scenery!), as well as a clear view over all the bay and the beaches. It was fantastic to watch the sun setting in the evening. We got to see some of downtown centro Rio. The Sambadrome - a purpose built avenue with stands for spectators that four 4 amazingly famous days are year are filled with the thousands of dsancers from Rios 12 samba schools for carnival. There was a small museum there and we got to see some of the dances and costumes...good inspiration for our Samba dancing at the Lappa party! We got taken to the outside of the Maracanna Stadium - the most famous stadium in South America and Brazil´s national arena - it has been known to seat 200´000 people but with seats inside it now seats 120´000 (I think..Sean will know more!) and is so huge and impressive. We walked through the hall of fame and put our feet in the footprints of Ronaldo and Pele´s! Gave Sean a taster which meant we swiftly went back to buy tickets for a football match on the weekend!

We also got to see the main cathedral in Rio. Its quite strange as it is built like a70´s concrete pyramid, very very ugly from the outside, but inside it has four beautiful mosaic glass windows, that flood in the light and really make for a mad contrast - the ugly with the beautiful! The catchedral itself can seat 20´000 people, not surprising in a country like brazil that is as linked to its catholicism as it is to its football!

Rio is huge and has so many different Barrios, some of the oldest, like Santa Teresa being the most beautiful, with a little old tram line that runs up into the hilly barrios with fantastic views. Its a strange contrast, between the Zona Sul and Norte - the south being filled with beachjes and rich people and the North the complete opposite. When you get these views, you can see how many favellas (shanty towns) there are - over 700 in the city alone, with the largest favella in South America placed right next to the fancy named hotels. Its hard, and can make the place pretty dangerous. A lot of things at ngiht, the clubbing, big parties are all organised with hostels etc, as its pretty unsafe to go most places alone. We´d only been here 2 days and had already heard of 3 muggings in the hostel, so we knew we had to be careful. Its vbeautiful and definitely worth coming here though.

One of the tours on offer was a favella tour - a day in the largest favella in the city (and South America), seeing one of the locals ´houses´, playing with the kids, doing a motorbike ride. It was a strange choice, but we didn´t want to do it. I had already worked in a favella in Brazil, and loved every second of it, but didn´t have the desire to go back as a tourist, staring at people I didn´t know and wasn´t working with just to go back to our ocmfy hostel. However, I wanted Sean to see it, but he wasn´t keen either, so we left the idea alone. Favellas are unavoidable in the city however, wand we passed by them many times...they lok prretty similar to the favellas in the city centre of Fortaleza where I worked 6 years ago, more built up and absolutely huge, as opposed to the community I worked with out in the countryside where the ´houses´were shacks, or even trees. Like I said, its a mda city, full of osme of the world´s richest people and some of its poorest, but it makes it all the more colourful adninteresting to visit. Everywhere you walk,. right from the richest neighbourhoods and outside the poshest flat blocks, to the worst areas, there are people sleeping on the streets every hundred metres or so. Its an awful situation and caused by way too much corruption, but its still an amazing city to enjoy.

We spent a little more time on the beaches...couldn´t hack much as it was either really cloudy or so hot it was over 43 degrees, so just little bits here and there but we walked all along the coastline (theres a good 90km of it...so maybe not all!) and checked out some of the local beaches, from Flamengo (a grogeous area with nice park and quiet streets), to copacabana, Ipanema (the ´cool´spot) and Leblon. Ipanema and Leblon are nice enough beaches..to the untrained foreign eye they all look pretty similar. Long white stretches of gorgeous white sand with equally gorgeous bikini clad Brazilians lounging around! The waves are a lot more family-friendly at Ipanema and the ´sections´are a little more clearly defined, the gay area, the artisan area etc! Its all very ´cool´. The whole area off the beach is alot more posh, with beter bars, expensive shops, where as Copacabana has a nice run-down chram (and cheaper hostels hence why wer´re staying there) but I think Copacabana is really nice! They´re all lovely beaches, and you get asked a million times if you want wate, beer, grilled cheese, coconut water sunglasses, tanning oil..anything under the sun, literally!

We haven´t been able to afford many of Rio´s fantastic nights out, but we´ve definitely been making the most of the cheap caopirinhas at the hostel! We did however head to Lapa for a street party on Friday night. Lapa is like the La Boca of Buenos Aires (where tango originated from). If you want to go out in Rio, want real samba music and dancers, then this is the area you have to head to! It was a really novel and fun way to spend a night out...a whole area of town, under the old aqueduct covered in amazingly creative grafiti, lined with bars and clubs throwing out forro music and samba music. The streets were insane - a million little stands selling caipirinhas, beer, all sorts of food and everything else you could need on a night out, and people just filled the streets, chatting, dancing. There were some great bands on the streets, an amazing group of pure percussionists (just men with drums and bongos in their hands!) beating out incredible samba beats that we attempted to move properly to! To say we spent the night samba-dancing away is probably a little enthusiastic! We attempted to samba, and obviously looked pretty hopeless compared to the locals but they all had a laugh with us anyway! It was a really good night out, a street part every weekend in the UK would definitely suit me more than bars and clubs, and if you´re ever in Rio make sure you head to that area for a good old party.

After a few hours sleep, we woke up to match day! We were pretty excited as the Maracana (or Mario Filho stadium as its officially known) is such an iconic stadium. Despite the fact that the lovely ticket lady had managed to give us tickets in completely different sections to each other, we felt positive we could go down, play dumb foreigner, and attempt in broken Portuguese to sweet talk them into letting us sit together! Luckily the Brazilians are so friendly we didn´t need to worry, combine that with lack of any organisation, minus a quick body search before entering and we could have sat wherever we wanted! The hostel had offered a ´football trip´(everything can be done through the hostels for safety reasons) but it was double the price than buying the tickets yourself, so we had spent all morning mid-week queueing with the crazed ´futbal´ fans to buy tickets! Unfortunately Flamengo (the best team in Rio at the moment) didnt have any games on in the time we were in Rio, the only premier game was flumanese (bottom of the league Rio team) vs Palmeiras, and whilst this still would have been good, the teams didnt have much history or much of a fan base. So Sean decided we would go watch Vasco, a team in the second league, but with the biggest history and following in Rio...if the football wasn´t going to be great, at least the atmosphere would be crazy! And crazy is a gross understatement! It was by far one of the most entertaining days in my life, if football matches were like that in the UK I´d be a season ticket holder! It was like a two hour dance party! The Maracana was immense in itself, but this was a second division team (think Cardiff City) and attendance was 82´000 people! Its unheard of! And everyone one of them was LOCO! They sang constantly, partied, danced, cheered, jumped around...it made International day at the Millenium Stadium look positively tame! I was physically exhausted
afterwards (there are seats but you literally never sit down) form all the songs, dancing, waving of balloons and flags! It was an absolutely incredible atmosphere, although the game itself was dramatic enough (switch off non-football fans!). Vasco are on to be promoted back into the Premiere so everyones excited already. They scored an early goal, the other rubbish team managed to equalise, but then isaw something even Sean has never seen in a football game...a striker passed the goaly, clear on goal, and then the goaly all but punched him and pushed him out the way to stop him scoring! So needless to say the keeper got a red card and was sent off...however, that team had already used all their subs, so a player had to play in goal for the penalty, so Vasco ended up winning rather dramatically and the whole place was an absolute insane party! Who needs nights out when you have football matches in Brazil?!

Luckily we had had a calm morning on the beach to prepare for all the mahem (althoug it was 45 degrees today so it wasn´t so much relaxing as melting), but I think that is the last we will see of the sun. Thunderstorms and cloud are due in tomorrow for the rest of our time in Rio...Still, we can´t complain, we have had 5 days of perfectly clear blue skies (and ridiculous temperatures that reach 33 degrees before 9am!), so a little cloub might be a bit of relief. Not to mention good preparation for arriving back into a British winter in a few days time!

We had a bit of drama at the hostel the other night...We had a Brazilian lad in our room for a while, I dind´t particularly warm to him anyway as he was quite sleazy, but when I tried to go to bed there were police in our room and the lovely receptionist here said i couldn´t come in. Next thing the Brazilian is being marched out of the hostel in handcuffs! Turns out he has been stealing credit cards off travellers in the hostel and going shopping on them! It was weird as me and Sean had had a few conversations about him, saying how much he LOVED to shop (every day he came back with new jeans, cameras, sunglasses). I was in the room with him on my own over lunch and he had 3 very similar pairs of Nike trainers, the most expensive ones you can buy, and I commented to sean that that was weird for a traveller. We had decided he was rich and came to rio for a shopping trip. Now we feel a bit stupid as why if he was that rich would he be staying in the largest dorm, cheapest beds in the cheapest hostel in Rio!? But it never clicked...now he´s left (he was on the bed next to me) us and another brazilian couple sat up chatting about it..found laods of receipts in his bed, for 600R pairs of Oakleys, new cameras, designer jeans...aparently he had spent over 1000 pounds on one travellers credit card. Luckily he had checked his statements when reported it missing and saw a shop in Rio and this idiot came back with bags from the same shop so they called the police. A rare piece of actual decent policing in Brazil!! Usually they tell you not to bother calling the police for theft as it happens so much they don´t care but as the guy was still here they came out! Weird, but he still has a locked locker in our room full of stuff and phone in there goes off every 5 mins...very dodgy, but a little drama to gossip about!

As in most of South America, plenty of places in Rio city shut down on Sundays, and are taken over with markets, sports and family parks...its a great community spirit and we´ve been lucky enough to witness it all over, Santiago in Chile and La Paz in Bolivia. Flamengo gets comletely taken over, and one of the most famous markets in Rio, the ´hippie´ market in Ipanema takes over the beach all day. So we headed down to check out the artesania...it was a really nice area, full of lovely stalls and shops and we had a good time chilling around the streets and on the packed beaches.

We finally made it properly into the city centre of Rio...its very tempting never to leave the Zona Sul once you are there! But the clouds set in, then the thunderstorms, and it looks like they are here to stay until we leave, so we were tempted off the sands and into the city! The centre is huge, so we headed for an area I had read about with all the markets and cheap goods sold at decent prices. It was quite fun to look around markets again (we had missed that since being in Brazil), and the thousands of stands of football shirts (they even have them in vest style here for the heat!) I saw quite an amusing sight...a dog with heels on! Little red felt booties with a 2cm wooden wedge on them. Wrong, very wrong. The rest of downtown has the usual nice plazas, a few nice churches, especially in some of the older areas like Gloria.

We took the ancient yellow tram on a little trip around the city...they must be novel in Brazil as everyone was very excited, yet it wasn´t entirely ground-breaking for me and Sean! Still..it was a sweet little experience! A pretty bumpy ride to the extent your back actually hurts by the time ithas done its little loop, but it takes you up into the hills of the city, and into the historical barrio of Santa Teresa. Its a cute little area - a mixture of old crumbling mansions, covered in plants and artistic grafitti, favellas and weird tower blocks, but it has a run-down charm and some nice arty cafes and shops. A relaxed and slightly quirky feel, not to mention some great views down into the city...not that the tram is smooth enough to get a single shot! At the top loads of the local kids finishing school would run up alongside the tram and jump on..very San Fran-esque! It runs back into the center of town over the old aqueduct, over the top of crazy Lapa, past the beautiful Municipal Theatre, so its a nice little route, and for 20p the trams not a bad little tourist attraction! The rest of the day was spent willing the clouds away on Copacabana beach, and a quiet night before our final day in Rio!

To celebrate the end of the trip we decided to head out to a Forro...its a type of Brazilian music, almost a little like lounge-slash-samba music but with a latino beat and soul to it, inherently Brazilian and really interesting stuff. I really liked it. Its in Lapa again, the real spirit of Rio, and all the locals just head down, get some Caipirinhas and listen to the live music on drums, and all sorts of other crazy looking hand-held instruments. There´s also a very specific type of dance that goes with it...even the locals we´ve spoken to have had trouble learning it, so they´ve advised us to just relax and go with the music rather than trying to follow the steps! I have no rhythm compared to Brazilians! We went to the oldest venue in Brazil for Forro so it had loads of atmosphere, and the locals all danced up close together, it was a really great atmosphere! The music was pretty impressive too... A fantastic way to celebrate the last night of the trip!

Rio has been a fantastic place to end our trip...its been Em´s dream to come here since she was about 8 years old, and so it couldn´t be a more perfect ending. The city has everything, beaches, nightlife, attractions, bays, national park, city lifestyle, and its given us the perfect half hectic half relaxing beach holiday to end the trip in style. We can´t believe we are coming home in a days time...its a very surreal feeling and amidst all the excitement of seeing family and friends, eating food that isn´t rice, and having a little routine and normality, there is a deep panic rising about the future, having to face serious life, and the let down of not travelling anymore!

But we can´t complain, we have had the most amazing trip humanly possible. I am getting a little emotional just thinking about it! We have seen places we never thought we would see, and experienced things we never could have imagined experiencing 10 months ago. Every single day has been a new experience, and we cannot say how blessed we have been to have this fantastic trip, and be able to do different things every day. We have met some absolutely amazing people, locals and travellers alike, and have been super privaleged to stay with friends and family around the world that have treated us like kings (and queens!), not to mention the visits we´ve had and all the other blessings. I can´t explain how much of an incredible lifestyle travelling is, the local life you get to taste, the incredible wonders of the world you get to see, the intense poverty, but also absolute richness of different cultures around the world. It is a lot to take in in such a short time, and I do feel like I could spend a lifetime travelling this amazing planet that never ceases to amaze either of us. Travelling might not be for everyone, there are some tough times, some intense moments, some points where you feel like giving up and heading home, but they seem to last only a second compared to the millions of fantastic moments you constantly seem to have. It has left us a thousand times more appreciative, with more open minded heads, and with a taste to learn new things and really live life.

All of that said, we are really looking forward to seeing everyone when we´re back, and we promise not to bore you all with stories and photos...not too much anyway! Bring on the jumpers, bring on the Christmas trees, bring on not having to wear suncream...we´re coming home! xx