We checked in the Stand Fast hostel which was a new hostel only opened 4 months ago. You could tell it was beautiful and only $20US each a night. The owner Cloud took us out the first night to a hostel in a safe favela called the Maze, and it really was a maze finding your way around. There were stairs and rooms everywhere. On the first Monday of the month they have a jazz night up there. This hostel has amazing views of Rio and it was a great experience to see our first favela. The favela was high up on a hill so to get down you had to catch a moto-taxi or wait for this bus to fill up. We decided on the moto-taxi and they ended up taking us the whole way back to our hostel. It was really fun and I know motorbikes are really dangerous but we were very cautious.

The next day we went up to Santa Teresa and had a look round. Didn't really see much up there, a little bit of street art and ate an awesome meal at some random restaurant. We then made our way down to Copacabana beach where one of the Carnaval Blocos’s was having a rehearsal so there were 1000’s of people down there following the band and dancers. We caught up with Jeff, Ton, and Rob from our hostel and had a few beers with them. It was awesome fun gave us a real taste of Carnaval. There were plenty of cross dressers, beer sellers every couple of meters and the tequila man, he was walking around with a bottle of tequila, a tray with lime, salt and shot glasses on it. Luckily we dislike tequila or else that could have been dangerous.

The Hippie Markets were on the next day so we went looking and ended up buying heaps of souvenirs as we knew that we were sending a box home soon. That night we went on an arranged tour to go and see a football match. Flamengo vs. Botafogo, two big rivals in Rio. We got picked up in a mini-van which was fully of tourists and taken to a petrol station close to the grounds to fill up on beers before the match as the grounds are alcohol free! It was quite hard case drinking at the petrol station with a few dozen other people before heading over to the ground. To get into the ground we all got fully searched by security which we were all pleased about as we had just heard about the fights in Egypt. I think even some of the boys enjoyed the pat down. The crowds where wild with loads of chanting and drums the whole match. As much I don’t like football I really enjoyed this even though the score was 0 – 0. The main player everyone wanted to see was Ronaldinho even though apparently he was not very good that day.

The weekend was over so it was time to check out the sights in Rio. First off we went to sugar loaf which is a hill in the middle of Rio with 2 cable cars to get you to the top. On the first stop there is also a helipad and we had been advised to take the helicopter over Rio, so we did and it was so amazing. We can’t recommend it enough. It flew us around Christ the Redeemer and then over Copacabana beach in only 7 mins but well worth it.

The hostel that night arranged for us all to go on a boat cruise. It was only $25US all you can drink for 1 hour and then drop off back at the port at 4am. It was such a beautiful night and there were great views back over to the city. As we spent the next day feeling a little sorry for ourselves we decided we should leave the hostel so we went for a walk to check out this favela that was close to our hostel. We had to take this cable car up to the very top and then we walked back down. This favela is the one that Michael Jackson filmed the video for "They don’t really care about us" so they have a monument up the top and platform where some of the clip was filmed. Check it out on YouTube. It was pretty full on walking back down looking all around but the locals are used to it and were all smiles. Our mate Enda even got a haircut while he was up there.

The next day we checked out and moved down the coast to a little surf village where we were going to learn kite surfing. Before we went down we went and checked out Lapa another part of town which is quite good. There is a roman viaduct there and some really famous stairs (Escadaria Selarón) that the artist Selaron has spent most of his life putting ceramic tiles on. It’s the same place that Snoop dogg and Pharrell filmed 'Beautiful’ also coca-cola and a few other big companies have filmed ads there. It was cool looking for tiles from our countries and all over the world. (There are more Aussie ones than Kiwi ones if you were wondering). We even got to meet and have our photo taken with the artist. It was a good old mission to get to this place but finally made it to our hostel taking us about 3 hours and should have only taken about 1 hour. We got stuck at this bus station and it was so so busy. We invented a new game called “Bus bingo”. It’s really quite easy go to a bus station with a lot of buses coming and going, ask a local which bus you need to get to where you’re going, then watch every other bus come in with a similar number but not the right one. Sometimes you even see a bus that has the place where you’re going but when it pulls up and you ask the driver he tells you the same special number is right behind him. It was quite funny at the start, everyone was helping us but no one really helped us. We’ve since played this game many times. We stayed at Rio Surf and Stay in Recerio which was cool but they only do stand up surfing so we had to mission about 1 hour by bus back up the coast to the designated kite surfing beach. It was in a really rich area with shopping malls and nice hotels so there was no chance of staying any closer. Went out to dinner at a pizza place close to the hostel where they sold 74cm pizzas. Oh and also saw this massive rat the size of a cat climbing along the power lines. Even the locals were impressed! Gotta love Brazil.

We got some lessons with a guy called Jose and it was so much fun. He kept yelling at us to relax when we did something wrong but I think maybe it was just the language barrier. Ha ha. Trying to get home that night we played bus bingo for about 3 hours and no bus that we wanted came so we kinda figured that we should just get a taxi. Taxi was sweet and only took about 15 mins. I think we are way to patient and should have done that way earlier. The next day after we took the mission to get there, there was no wind but it was a nicer beach than the one closer to us so we just chilled. We got dropped off a few blocks from our hostel and decided to walk along the beach where we came across this beach bar with a band playing so we sat down and had a beer. The band was quite good although one of the guitarists was a bit drunk. They even played Hotel California although it was a different version than I’ve heard. They only sung some of the chorus twice which was in English the rest in Portuguese with long solos. There was a drunk guy there walking round with a bottle of cachaca (local fire water) offering shots to everyone. It turned out it was his 50th so Junior didn’t want to offend and had a shot. He kept his composure quite well although when the guy left he said it was not the best for the first drink of the day.

We had enjoyed our time in Rio but it was time to fly to Salvador.