We arrived in Brazil absolutely shattered! So we decided to treat ourselves to a couple of days of nothing...well we did exciting things like laundry and watching the football, but other than that, we did nothing!The atmosphere in Brazil when the football is on is amazing! They are football crazy, even more than in England!

We decided to visit the Favelas with a tour recommended by the Lonely Planet and because it supports the local community. The tour actually pays for a school service, where children go, in addition to regular school. This has meant that children who usually leave school at 11 have improved so much that 35 were sent to university, as a direct result of the Marcelo Armstrong Favela Tour. We met our guide who took us first to Rocinha favela, one of the biggest in Rio. There are around 753 Favelas just in the city of Rio. The favelas are basically houses built on public land, which after 5 years, if no-one claims the land, becomes theirs legally. The favelas, therefore, tend to stretch up mountain sides and are quite unique in Rio, in that they are situated among both the rich and the poor areas. The favelas are stacked high and families tend to sell their roof space as plots to build, as they can not often afford to build the second floor. The Rocinha favela starts across the roads from the very pricey American Private school and overlook Beverley Rios where the millionaires live. This favela began developing around a disused road, which was originally built for the Gavea Formula One race track! The favelas are the safest places in the world for robberies, you are guaranteed never to be robbed in a favela, as this is the most important law the locals live by. The rule was put in place by the Drug Lords, who do not want the police in the area. The Drug lords have so much power that they provide investment into the area and police the area, electing heads of districts who sort any problems, without the police having to be called. Our guide told us about an armed robbery at a bank in the favela, the drug lords were at the scene within minutes all heavily armed to find out that it was the police who were robbing the bank, and it was drug lords that stopped it! The police are considered to be danger in the favela and there are children who work for the drug lords as look outs. They fly red kites for danger and also white flags for a new shipment of cocaine and green flags for shipments of marajuana! Our guide told us that kids involved with drugs would not very often make it past the age of 25 years, unless they were recruited into the 'inner circle'! When they can then live till about 45!! We also went to see Vila Canoas another, much smaller, favela, which sees a lot of investment from the tour. We visited the school and met some of the local children. The tour was really interesting and completely changed our minds about favelas and was probably the safest place we have been in Brazil.