Oi! (portuguese for hello im promised!)..

Oh my god there´s so much to write about.. absolutely in love with Rio. I know I´ll forget everything we´ve done because there was so much and i didnt take my camera for hardly any of it, gutteddd, but will try and recall!

We spent the first day in a hotel with our group.. but this was our last day together *sobs*. most of us went on a favela tour as soon as we got there.. which involved being razzed up the ghetto hill on the back of a psycho motorbike driver who enjoyed squeezing between traffic when there was only about 2mm of room at 100mph, talking to barnetts driver while not looking at the road, and talking to himself. pretty glad to be here to tell the tale! we then were took round the favela by our guide. It was really dirty and all crammed together, we visited a few local businesses (of the painting and chocolate donught variety, dont worry!)and also passed some blokes with walkie talkies and machine guns - pictures werent allowed! i felt quite at home with the street kids, our portuguese mates told us a standard phrase in rio is that ýour bedroom looks like a favela´.. i think mum mightve noticed the resemblance between the 2.

Because it was our last night together before we all went off our separate ways.. we went for a sushi meal and out drinking in Lapa afterwards woo. It was a bit of a chav place but we still had a brill night.. me and moore attempted going to an indie club we´d heard about around 5 in the morning on the way home but for some reason that didnt quite work out! The others took their taxi to mcdonalds.. a far more sensible option!

The next day we went to the Maracana stadium for the local rio derby Flamengo V Fluminense!! I got the impression this was a bit like man u v man city as flamengo had way more support and fluminense were the underdogs.. wé´d probably have sat in the other side if had realised this before but were quite happy to be Flamengo fans.. we all donned some fakey shorts and grant had her flag ahaha. the atmosphere was awesome before it even started with flares and flags and singing everywhere.. which then continued through the game. it was a pretty good one to watch although none of us had a clue who the players were! it finished 2-2 at the end (With Flamengo playing catchup throughout) so quality there were loads of goals to see.

AFter this we went to a ´favela funk´party. we found it quite amusing the first day we spent apart from our group we ended up in the middle of the ghetto at a massive party haha but actually it was part of an organised thing so was all safe etc etc. was a really wicked night thought, especially since it was so different, it was just like 8 mile and at the end the blokes were all dancing a gangster routine lol wish had pics but the searches at the door were for cameras!

We have also moved out of luxary accomodation now .. back to slumming it!! To start off with we stayed at a dead nice hostel in the suppossedly nicer area of Ipanema.. we had a 6bed room between the 5 of us and the place was really cosy with nice staff, kitchen etc. We´re enjoying being able to make our own food again too - dont think ive ever enjoyed a plate full of vege so much!

The next day I´m sure we did something of the faffing variety.. looked rund Ipanema, got food shopping, went mcdonalds.. the essentials.. cant really remember. Later on though we went to meet back up with some guys we´d met on our first night in Chile! That was dead cool, we went round near their Uni to a studenty place and hung out for a bit.. weird cause we´ve done so much in so little time since meeting them!

The next day it was time to give Jesus a visit! We drove up most of the way to christ the redemeer then walked to the top. The views were absolutely amazing and we were glad we´d waited to do it by ourselves rather than go with our group when it had been raining and you wouldnt have been able to see as far. It looked picture perfect in every direction and you could see all the beaches and favelas and the lagoon ahhhhh im in love with Rio! We also went to the famous steps in Sanata Teresa.. the tile man Selaron was there, a bit insane in the membrane, still tiling all over the steps and walls.. looked very pretty.

That night Mateus invited us to a bbq at his house.. we thought this would be like a typical english one so turned up with some manky burgers but they did us really good meat etc oops.. the caprihinias went down well too! Barn also dropped her camera down off the balcony so had to wander into the ´snake-infested woods´to retrieve it. Must be noted that we´re practically Rio residents now!

AFter 3 days in Ipanema.. we moved to Mellow Yellow in Copacabana (which id read was far more touristy/dangerous but didnt see much of a difference). Our hostel here though wasnt as good cause they had triple bunk beds and guess who ended up right on the top!

Copacabana beach was so good, really pretty and very sunny. me and grant went down early one morning while the others went shopping but then had to take sully to hospital cause her foot was still playing up from the toilet door incident. The dr said it was infected and sorted her out with xrays, cream, bandages etc and its a lot better now :)

Thursday night was to be the night we finally got to go to the indie place Mateus and Vinnie had told us about! We met up with them and predrank at a bar where u just stand in the road, doing it the local way! Rich randomly managed to find us there too so came the club with us. Casa da matriz was wicked, its a converted house with 2 floors, moore spent the whole night in the drum & bass upstairs, while most of us were downstairs.. wish could remember what tunes were on! me and moore stayed pretty late with the boys until takeaway cravings got the better and we ended up in some fancy restaurant cause its all we could find, ordering the most expensive cheese burger ever argh!

Once again ive forgotten what we did in the day - mooch about i think. played our favourite game of looking for brazil shirts!! we were pretty tired after the previous night so went for a kip in the evening before going to a street party in Lapa. apparently the last thing on sullys ´must-do´list! we only really went for a quick look, i didnt drink to save the pennies a bit (rio is so expensive!).. it looked pretty ace but we´d already had some quality nights so headed back about 2.30 (We only turned up at 1 after kipping until 11.. really suprised i got out of bed at all!) Vinnie and Caio were there and told us the plan to go to a gig (The Hives) in Sao Paulo the next day so we decided to go with them, especially since it was on our way down the coast.. i dont think any of us would have left Rio for weeks unless for a really good reason!

I think its pretty safe to say we had the most amazing time in Rio, my favourite so far along with the Inca Trail.. I´ll never really know how we managed to leave!