After 12 hours of sleep we are now ready to explore Costa Rica.

We spend the night before at the Airport in Rio because our plane left ridicoulously early in the morning, so we decided to spend some hours at the airport instead of paying a hostel .

It feels like ages since our last blog entry from Buenos Aires. So many things to tell, where should I start? I think we were about to take a bus to the Iguazu falls.

Those falls are amazing and probably the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen in my life...although I also said that about the salt flat in Bolivia, and Machu Picchu and the volcanoes....and it will not be the last time I said that on this trip I guess...Anyway the falls are breathtaking and no picture can describe the feeling standing next to the garganta de diablo and having the feeling of beeing sucked in at any time.

We visited first the Argentinian side and than crossed the border to Brazil. Our hostel in Foz do Iguazu was really nice and we met some cool people who kept telling us how nice the beaches in Brazil were. So we decided to skip our trip to Bonito, which is north of Foz do Iguazu and instead go directly to the coast. We haven't had any beachtime since Miami and had travelled so fast in the last weeks, so we really needed some time to relax.

We went to Ilha do Mel, or honey island in English, a small, cute Island right off the shores of southern Brazil. The Island is really layed back, there are no cars allowed and at this time of the year there was nearly anybody, so we often had the large white beaches to ourselves. After three days of relaxing and drinking Caipirinha, the national drink of Brazil we were ready for some other beaches and went further north. 24 hours and four different busses later we arrived in Trindade, a small Fisher village between Sao Paulo and Rio. The guys from Foz had heartily recommended it to us. Trindade is Brazil at its best: kms of white beaches, mountains covered with rainforest, waterfalls hidden in the jungle, beach bars and some crazy locals, real characters, you can only find in those type of villages. We stayed two days longer then we had planned because we got addicted to the beachtime and the really fun parties at the beach drinking a couple of Gabriellas, a cocktail with Cachaca, honey, cinnamon, clove and some other spices, that nearly tasted a bit like christmas. We stayed at a beautiful hostel surrounded by rain forest whose owner, George, is a very nice English guy who, like many others, fell in love with Trindade and decided to stay. It was so funny trying to talk to the locals. They are really curious about foreigners and want to know where you are coming from. Brazilians in general are very nice and helpful. not very practical, but they would always try to help you even if you don't know what the hell they are talking about. We never got to a place the way we originally wanted to, but we never really got lost either. It was really sad to leave Trindade in the end. This place is somehow special! In Trindade we've met Lisa and Alex, two European girls who live in Rio in one of the favelas, the slums that are famous for armed drug dealers that fight the police. They had escaped the city for some days because their favela was beeing 'pacified' which means the police enters with helicopters, tanks and heavily armed to make the drugs and arms disappear in the favela in order to make it more safe for tourist for the upcoming football world cup and the olympic games in 2016. Apperently the people in the favela judge the situation after the police came as even more dangerous for them because the drug dealers had their rules and if you didn't mess with them you were safe. The police instead often is really corrupt and violent, so you never know what they are going to do. But for tourist it should be more safe now, because the guns are gone and there are no fights between drug dealers and police anymore at the moment. The problem for the locals is, that a lot of them lost their jobs, because they had non-official businesses in the favela, but the government doesn't care about that, they just want the drugs and arms out so they can say the favelas are safe for when the world cup starts.

Anyway, they invited us to come to their place and make a favela tour to have a look ourselves. We booked a hostel, that is at the border of the favela Vidigal, which was really good situated, close to the beaches and the center. That is a problem too, that some favelas are really close to the posher areas and obviously Rio wants the whole center of the city to be safe.

The first day it was raining and I was close to stay in the hostel the whole day because what do you want to do in Rio except going to the beach and visit the great viewing points, both things you cannot do when its raining... Christian forced me to have some Caipirinhas and it worked, after that I was peacefully walking through Rio and in the afternoon the sun came out and we visited the Christ from where you really have an awesome view over the city.

Next day, Lisa and Alex picked us up and we took a motorbike taxi up the only road of the favela. That was really fun because the favela is build up a mountain, so the road was very curvy and quite steep. You have the greatest view at the top and we were surprised that everything looked so normal. They have shops, markets, restaurants and bars in there and children playing on the streets. Instead of armed kids and drugdealers, you see now a lot of armed policemen. We hiked up the mountain behind the favela from where you have an even greater view, if that is even possible. You can also see South Americas biggest favela, Rocinha at the top. 400.000 people live there and from up there you could see how busy it was...music, motor bikes, people working at their houses...so many noises.

Back down we visited the house of Lisa and Alex which is really basic and not nice, but the girls have everything they need. The funny thing was, that everybody knows them, it was like a little village, where everybody knows everybody. People were not even looking at us, it was the most normal thing that we came to visit. We had dinner in one of the restaurants with the nicest owner. They were really curious to know where we were coming from and one of them wanted to buy us a drink. It is amazing, those people need to make their living with 250 $ a month and they even want to share it with you even though it is obvious that you have much more money...

One other interesting thing about Vidigal is, that they have a lot of cultural institutions. They have a really good theatre school, where some actors of the well-known film 'City of God' studied. Those actors are famous all over Brazil but still they are living in the favela, they don't want to live anywhere else because that is where their family is. After having seen what life in a favela can be like, we can totaly understand them.

It was an incredible experience and I would recommend to everybody to go and visit the favela even if the hotel says not to. You have to see them for yourself.