The real reason for being in Brazil happended on Saturday afternoon, quite simply football! The housekeeper got us tickets for the game early on saturday for the white section at the Maracana, the white section is for the tourists although it was full of Flamengo nutters. The Maracana holds 90,000 thousand and was about half full. The game finished 3-1 to the away team Resende who are a lower division team so it was a bit of a semi final cup upset. Pretty livel...

Hello, Yesterday Grant and I stayed in for a while out of the sun and relaxed, it really does get too hot! In the afternoon we wlaked across the road to the Maracana football stadium and did the tour. Grant enjoyed this thoroughly and it really is a huge stadium. They hold concerts there as well as football matches. When they were building the stadium in 1950 they ran out of money, so there is a whole section of seats that people got to buy. They were the sam...

Hi Everyone, On Tuesday Grant and I went to a little mall just down the street from us (horrible not being able to buy stuff). The guy that runs the guesthouse managed to get his friend to get us two tickets for the carnival. You need tickets to see the main parade. We got them for Sunday and they are in a really good section to sit in. We then visited Corcovado (Statue of Christ). It takes around half an hour on the wee train to get you to the top, so yo...

Hi everyone, Grant and I have landed safely in Rio. Managed to get a taxi and get to the guest house we are staying in which is right across the road from the Maracana Football Stadium, so Grant is happy! We went to see Sugar Loaf Mountain today. This was challenging as not very many people speak English, however, we did manage to get two subways and a bus to the Mountain and back without too much of a problem. We want to get as much of the sight seeing done ...