Ola People!!! Im finally in Rio!!! The first five days have been brill...madrid was sooo cool and sooo hot...have myself a tan already!! The hostel we stayed in was really nice however we had some extremely patriotic americans staying with us which was sometimes annoying On Friday we managed to give ourselves our own city tour of madrid which was quite entertaining...7 hours of walking and a lot of going round in circles!! We finally managed to see all the sights and then retired to the hostel bar with our new found american friends! One of whom managed to spill his drinks simutaneously on all of us!! Sunday we met up with some spanish friends who gave us a 'proper tour' and then taught us how to eat and party the spanish way!! We retired to bed at around 3 knowing that we were going to feel seriously ill the next day!! Sunday...quite hungover and not at all prepared we set off at 8 to catch our flight to rio...little did we know that 3 hours later when we should have been boarded and ready to take off, would we be running frantically through madrid airport nearly missing our flight!!! Arriving 3 hours before flying...it took forever to find the right check in desk and then a further 45 mins to actually check in our bags!! we were then told that we would be boarding in 30 mins but that we needed to get a train to the correct terminal which was going to take 25. To cut a long story short...we arrived at our terminal to a mass of people (no queing system in Spain!!) all waiting to get through passport control. So by this time our plane was boarding and we were stuck at the back of this mass starting to panic. As the thought paying of paying for another ticket to rio dawned on us...we pushed our way though the crowds and ran until we reached our flight which was already on the last call. Turns out that this is a frequent thing in madrid as when we boarded...half the passengers were all stuck back in passport control!! Anyway ...after waiting for everybody to board we finally set off and arrived in rio safe and sound. Today we visited the christ statue and it was nothing short of amazing!! We got a taxi from our hostel there and back for under a tenner...i~m loving the strength of the british pound over here!! Ive got some brilliant pix so when i eventually learn how to download them from my camera i will email them on. We then strolled around rio city centre which is manic...so many people...so many cars and no road rules is a great combination!!! Tomorrow we are off on a city tour and then to sugarloaf mountain so hopefully it will be nice and sunny...its winter over here so it~s really random..the sun goes down at about 5 but its still really hot.