We are now in Rio staying at a lovely guesthouse in Santa Teresa which is an old colonial district with steep cobbled streets high on a hill. A British couple, Bill and Sue, run the place and have taken us under their wing a bit. They took us out to one of the favelas today to visit a friend of theirs who runs a kind of hostel/art space and used to be a BBC correspondent. He has been heavily involved in cleaning up the favela which was under the control of gangs and dealers. A fascinating man and an amazing place. Then out to lunch with them plus Bob's wife and son.
The two of us went out in Lapa to Carioca da Gema, a samba club, as we wanted to hear some live music. This turned out to be much more raucous than we had expected, as we seemed to be the only people in there who didn't know all the words to every song, and everyone bellowed along. It was a great night and interesting to see how diverse the crowd was and how friendly the atmosphere was.