Sooz and I took it easy this morning! We finally got out of the hostel at about 12ish, with the intention to wander to the lake,then up to the botanical gardens. Easier said than done! We walked through a park and sawsome turtles inthe lake sunning themselfs which was cute then wandered in the direction we thought the lace was - as you all are probably aware, my sense of direction is less than average and sooz is no better - needless to say we never made the lake! Wefound ourselves slightly off the beaten track heading roughly in the correct direction, then figured, lunch wouldbe nice! So we stopped at a local restaurante and had a lovely long lazy lunch....and maybe a cup (yes cup) of wine to go with it! We were having such a nice time getting to know one and other that we lost track of time and suddenly realised it was half 4! The botanical gardens which we thought were close by were to shut at 5! And we had come all that way......so off we went at speed this time,payed our 5reals entrance and rushed around the gardens which were beautifull. We saw some lovely lush gardens! We then got a taxi!lol back to the bit of town we knew and went backto our hostel. Sooz myself and the aussies, a irish guy called dave and mark, a newbie to the hostel had a few drinks then decided to go out to a local club called casa rosa in larinjeira (which i only remembered the name of as it sounds like laringitus!) Had an amazing night,we met three local guys in the queue who looked after us all night. We were the only gringos present and it really suprised me how welcoming everyone was, no wierd looks for venturing into local territorty! Sooz had stayed in at the hostel as she felt ill so i was the only girl, but the guys were lovely and looked after me the whole evening, we had a dance in both the brazilian popular music room and the brazilian funk room, all very good fun! I sould confess now that i drank beer all night which was in fact ´Dave- 0´s idea!They were so cheap though! I can see this travelling lark might change me in someways for the worse if i carry on drinking beer! The taxi journies had been so funny, on the way there the guys were gents and let me sitin the front while the four men squeezed in the back, dave was actually hanging off the handle, he was airbourne! On the way backthey had me sitting across three of them on the back like some kind of princess, such a funny evening, had a really good night, ending with a slice of pizza and freshly squeezed oj off a street vendour before bed!