Well after 61 years I finally made it to Rio. Ever since I was a small child I've wanted to come to Rio and now I'm here. It was no small deal getting here, with visas, airfare and the like but how can you be in South America and not come to Rio.

We arrived after dark, touching down just after 8:00 p.m. Sure enough - no driver. This is the second such failure since we left the ship. Knowing that were in a new country, a new city, arriving after dark, and a hotel that's about ONE hour away from the airport, it's something that you'd like to have work, at least once in a while.

Then there was Jose. A guy at the airport who drives a cab. He was our saviour and the solution to our problem. Jose called our hotel on his cell phone to confirm as he said, "they'd lie to you and tell you that you have a car, but your hotel won't send a car two hours to the airport to get you". Sure enough, the hotel confirmed that they had no record of any such reservation, so we opted to go with Jose. A charge of $65.00US would take us to the Orla Copacabana Hotel on Copacabana Beach.

We checked in, (tried the Vince101 at the front desk - we'll see what happens tomorrow - thanks for the lessons by the way Obi-Won) dropped our bags, and raced out for dinner, not having eaten all day really. Jose told us that the CBeach area was very safe and people moved about 24-hours a day here so really no issues if we decided to head out for dinner late at night. That we did. We headed west on the beach (well lit) looking for a place for dinner. We walked for a couple of minutes and found Manuello & Joaquin's, a very crowded restaurant with seemingly a local clientel,and under a large white tent.

After scanning the "english" menu, we made our choices - I went with the Chef's Special and indeed it was. We've found here that the portion sizes here in SA are enormous, you'd think we'd have learned by now. I had steak, pork, sausage, chicken, rice and fries, while Deb opted for chicken fingers. The whole entree was huge, but I managed to make a pretty good dent. During dinner, the skies opened up and we had to edge ourselves back under the tent from the frontline fringes as we got a little wet. Given the rain, we convinced ourselves that the banana's and ice cream was a good option to wait out the rain. Yet another good choice.

Our hotel is ok, it's new and everything's ok but it does remind me just a little bit (based on size) of some of the hotels (bizaness hotels) that Tom and I had while we were in Japan. It's very small but efficient. We're only here for three days so we'll be good I'm sure. The weather here tomorrow called for rain, but Jose assured us that you'll see nothing but sun tomorrow and maybe 40deg C - we'll see.

There's just a couple of things that we want to see - Corcovado or Christo Rendentor and Pan De Azucar or Sugar Loaf. Beyond that, it's laying out on the roof under the hot SA sun (I hope) drinking some Brazilian beer. It's 12:00 a.m. - time for bed I guess. Updates and photos to follow tomorrow.

Night All !