Well I'm now in Rio and its incredible. So far it has been pretty hectic. After what took a lifetime to get here from Buenos Aires (2 hours getting through passport control, but it wasn't all bad as me and Pat played Lord of the Rings top trumps to keep us entertained) I arrived at my hostel in Ipanema, the next beach along from Copacabana (but nicer and cleaner). That evening I just meet the people in my hostel, walked around and slept.

Day one in Rio I spent the morning on Ipanema beach just chilling out and in the afternoon I took one of the maniac buses that seem to run throughout South America to Corcovado Mountain, where the Christ Redeemer statue is. We took the 20 minute train up throught the forest, but unfortunately by the time we arrived he was all covered in cloud, which seems to happen from about 3pm. Managed to get a few pics which look quite eerie, but knew I'd go up again to see him in the sunshine. That evening I just went out for something to eat and some drinks around Ipanema with hostel buddies.

Day two started early by getting picked up at 8.45 to go on a favela tour. It was so interesting and I would recommend it to everyone. We visited two favelas, a small one to start with where we got to go into a local school and see the children a look at some of the arts and crafts they make. There we got to walk around through all the alleys (they only have 1 main road) and see the local people go about their day. There were a group of men who kept walking past with loads of bricks, it turned out they were building an extra floor in one of the houses. From there we went to another favela, the largest in Latin America. It was huge. They only have 2 roads and a million alleys and approximately 60,000-100,000 people live there. The second favela was obviously more crazy due to its size, but still fascinating. We were told about the favelas, their gangs, jobs including drug trafficking, schools and education (not great, most families get the children to work from about 8) and their rules (the police don't really get involved so the locals sort problems out themselves) Having said all that, we were very safe and able to take photos and I never felt worried about anything.

After the tour me and two girls in my dorm decided to go hangliding. We took off from Pedra Bonita at Tijuca National Park, running down a short wooden ramp and flying above the National Park, huge houses, streets and the sea, finally landing at Pepino Beach after 20-25 minutes flight time (it was really windy so we got a long flight).

That evening I moved to a hotel in Lapa were I joined some of my tour buddies. I miss being by the beach, but me and 2 other girls share a room with AC a nice shower, TV and the hotel has a roof bar and pool and sauna on the roof terrace. Also Lapa's lively at night during carnival because of all the street parties.

My first day in Lapa (yesterday morning) I went back up to see the Christ Reedemer in the sunshine. A group of us from the hotel went so we ended up getting a taxi to drive us up there. That meant we got to stop at a few other places to take some great pictures of the view across Rio.

After that was a mad rush back to the hotel, quick change and out towards the Maracana stadium to watch Fluminense vs Vasco. The stadium is amazing and so bloody big. The match also turned out to be great, even though we were cooking in the sun and the final score was 4-4 after Vasco got a penalty in the last 10 minutes. They were always behind and at one stage were losing 4-2, so after the match and on the Metro home they did not shut up, singing and playing drums. I loved it. We were all quite tired after a whole day in the sun so spent the evening having a few drinks on the roof bar and enjoying the fireworks and street parties around us.