Ahhhh what a night! The favela party was off the hook! I'm not much of a fan of clubbing, but this was something else altogether. I recall performing a haka in the middle of a samba circle (where all the best dancers jump into the middle to crump and stuff) and seeing full on gangsters walking around with solid gold guns for protection. This was as ghetto as it gets! I got up and had breakfast at the hostel, and had a good yarn with the hostel folks about the ...

Waking up in a 5 star hotel is definitely more ideal than the 12 person cesspool that is my hostel room. We all went down for breakfast, so I managed to not only get a free nights accommodation, but a mean buffet breakfast that could cure even the worst hangover. I said goodbye to our good friends Marco and Mauricio, and headed back to Copacabana. It was extremely hot today so I headed down to the beach to check out some massive ghetto booties. Copacabana is the ...

What a night! Lapa put on quite a show for us last night, Rio is definitely one of the party capitals of the world! I arrived home at about 5am, had a few hours sleep and then got up to head to breakfast. At around midday we got picked up to do a tour of the main attractions of Rio de Janeiro. First up was the Christ Redeemer - the huge statue of jesus on top of the mountain over looking the. It was absolutely massive when you stood right next to it, and it real...

It was quite surreal to be waking up in the insane city I have always wanted to visit - RIO DE JANEIRO! I got picked up from the hostel in the morning to visit the favelas - the massive slums that around 20 million people live in, throughout Brazil. The favela we visited was called Rocinha, and is the largest in Rio de Janeiro with a population of 300,000. The guide that took us through was as rough as guts and engaged to one of the drug dealers in the gang th...

On our final day in Paraty, Fi and I decided to go kayaking around the islands near Paraty beach. The water was glassy calm and it was beautiful and warm. We paddled around for about an hour around one of the large islands, and I saw a turtle pop his cute little head right next to my kayak. The rest of my day was spent walking around this cute little town and reading my book in the main plaza. This is a place for some serious R & R and that's exactly what I...