Finally we arrived in Rio, after a 24 hour bus jorney from Campo Grande! The journey itself was a pleasant one that actually seemed to go faster than we had thought it would. We arrived in Rio at around mid-day and ran straight into a problem!
When we were in Bonito we asked the lady at our hostel (who spoke English and Portugese) whether she could book us our accomodation and Steve and Elle´s transfer from the airport, which she happily did with the details of the hostel we gave her in Rio. We turned up at the hostel she had `booked`only to find that there was no reservation for us and that they had not received any call...to top it off they didn´t have any room for us either!

We ended up finding a 4 bed room at a different hostel who were able to organise another airport transfer too! Phew!

Steve and Elle arrived at about 11pm that evening (Monday) and we welcomed them with open arms! It was great to see them and to receive our letters (and Lee´s books) that our familys had sent.

Rio is a huge city with so much to do, so we narrowed down the main things we thought we could fit in within 4 days. We decided to visit Christ Redeemer which was amazing, the view of the city was stunning and you could see the world famous Sugar Loaf in the opposite direction. To be somewhere with so much meaning was simply incredible and to make it that little bit more special we happened to bump in to our very good friend Hayley (who we had travelled with for a while) as we qued up!

As well as Christ Redeemer we also went to see a football match, Flamengo V Gremio Barueri, at the world famous 200,000 seater Maracana Stadium. It was incredible, we were right in the thick of things in the crowd where all of the chanting, dancing and flag waving were, a truly fantastic night out.

Steve, Jess and Elle decided to do a Favela tour - an insight into what it would be like to live in the slums of Brazil. They each got escorted up to the main meeting point on a motorbike, which during rain didn´t seem like fun but turned out to be quite enjoyable, Steve being on the fastest motorbike at the front! The tour takes you on a walk down through the slums (as all the streets are on a hill overlooking the richer neighbourhoods below) and shows you just how difficult it must be to live there. It was a similar place that the legendary (Brazilian footballer) Ronaldo grew up in!

That evening we all decided to have a night out at the well known Zero Zero night club in Rio. The club (according to the Lonely Planet guide) has the best dance floor in Brazil...watching the shapes that Lee was throwing it was hard to disagree! The music was mainly R n B and hip-hop which suited us! It was a great night out, we all got very merry shall we say and returned to our hostel at 5am!

All in all a good time was had by everyone in Rio, on to Saquerema...