Our next stop upon leaving Sao Paulo was Ilha Grande - and what a place! Getting there was no picnic though. Poor admin work meant we arrived into the port town of Angra dos Reis at midnight, well after any ferries had stopped for the night, so had to get a cheapy hotel near the dock for the first ferry out. But when got there it was hard to removed the smile from our faces!

Ilha Grande is an island, about an hour off the coast, and about two hours bus ride south of Rio. It has an interesting past, having been both a penitentiary and a leper colony, but this history means that the only town on the island, Vila do Abraao, hasn't been built up and the whole place is paradise. Apart from police and emergency services there are no cars on the island, as well as no ATMs. There are apparently 102 beaches on the island and a good way to spend your time is to hike to a beach for the day and get a boat back in the evening.

We did none of that hiking malarky though. The day we arrived we headed to one of the closest beaches to our hostel and chilled for the day with some chilled beers. Thankfully for our entire time on the island the rainy weather hadn't followed us from Sao Paulo (or followed Maire from Ireland, but no one is pointing fingers). Our hostel also was pretty good, with a deck that looks out onto the bay, facing west so we could watch the sunset.

We took a boat trip on Thursday, to a place called the Blue Lagoon. Our boat was like something out of Pirates of the Carribean, minus the canons and Johnny Depp, and the thrill of the day was jumping the five or six metres from the deck into the cool ocean. That evening was spent on the deck of the hostel enjoying a BBQ and some rum.

On Friday we were rested, slightly sunburnt and making tracks again - next stop Rio de Janeiro. After initially getting a crappy hostel, because it was all we could get over the net, some excellent legwork by the O'Connells got us a hostel five times better for only R$5 more a night - including a complimentary Caipirinha! Yummy! Say what you want about lager, but I don't like it and have been waiting to drink Caipirinhas in Brazil for many, many months.

We were staying in Leblon, one of the nicer areas of the city, and one of the nicest beaches also. Copacabana might be the famous beach, but its also the most dangerous and Copacabana the area isnt that nice either. We'd also been advised by a Brazilian cop on one of the many, many drug checkpoints coming from the Bolivian border to go to Copacabana, take your pictures and leave. The other beach in the area is Ipanema (as in 'The Girl From Ipanema'), which is in between Leblon and Copacabana.

That night, a certain quarter final was top of the agenda and thankfully it was on at 2AM for us. So we decided to visit Lapa for the famous street party beforehand.

Lapa is an area of Rio and every Friday and Saturday a mad street party goes on, underneath the Arcos do Lapa aqueduct. There is food and drink on the streets, nightclubs and bars just off them and young people of all colours everywhere. What was noticeable from our walk around was that the black people on the streets and the whiter people in the bars and clubs. What was also noticeable was that we were right not to bring our cameras - I was trying to enjoy my first can when I felt a hand fumbling about in my pocket. I caught the wrist and at the end of it was a guy. His hand was empty but I offered him what would have been his spoils had he not been caught in the act - a Portuguese phrasebook. He wasn't interested.

The Lapa street party was as mad as we had been told. There were a couple of live samba bands on the street and music blaring from several bars. I was interested in one bar in particular - the Lapa Irish Bar. Unfortunately my near miss pickpocketing experience was not to be my evenings low point as Ireland crashed out of yet another World Cup quarter final.

When I got over that bit of rugby related depression, it was back to enjoying Rio de Janeiro, one of the world's most famous cities. On Saturday we spent some time getting to know the Leblon area, including a stroll along the beach and watching the sunset behind Dois Irmaos (Two Brothers) Mountain. The people on the beach clapped when the sun descended behind the mountain and we headed off on another night out, this time to experience the night life of Ipanema.

It was certainly more tame than Lapa. We headed for a place we thought was a club and that had been recommended to us by two separate sets of travellers called Emporio. We were all expecting some sort of club, but it turned out to be a bar about half the size of The Rendezvous and it was more popular to drink on the street outside the bar rather than inside. As usual the drinks weren't cheap, but thankfully an enterprising local gut was selling ice cold cans from a black bag on the corner.

We eventually decided to try another spot, to see what the action was there. We headed to Farme, a street supposed to be good for bars and clubs, only to find it just as quiet. One bar had two people in it. We were stumped - it was Saturday at midnight, where was the place to be? After a cocktail, we decided to give Emporio another try and it had livened up a bit but importantly there were still cold cans from the guy at the corner.