Rio de Janeiro (January River)

Finally, the day has come and the start of my round the world trip has begun - 1st stop Rio de Janiero!

Our adventures began before we even left Heathrow when we queued up for check in to be told that we had been put on standby, BA had over sold their seats - yep, it happens to the best of us regardless if you have worked in the travel industry or not. Our flight was at 2145, and we had to wait until 2100 to find out whether we would actually be flying that evening. I didn´t actually mind if we had to be compensated and put up in a hotel to fly the next day until Nadia had told me she had arranged for us to see a football match on the Saturday which meant we had to catch this flight!!! Luckily for us, we all managed to get on and 14 hours later we arrived in Rio.

The highlight of our 1st day was of course the football match at the Maracana Stadium - A huge stadium which seats 160,000 people. We saw Fluminese Vs. Sao Paulo play, which are 2 rivals teams from obviously the most well known Brazilian cities (Rio and Sao Paulo). The match was good, and I shared the same emotions as watching a West Ham game when Fluminese scored after 5 minutes, only to lose the game 2-1 - typical! The atmosphere at the ground was great fun, with the locals waving massive flags, banging on their Samba drums and generally making a lot of noise.

Unfortunately the weather has been rain, rain, rain - butyesterday we decided to take the plunge and make it up to Cocovado (Christ the Redeemer statue) to check out if we could see any of the views that this place is famous for. When we got there, the heavens continued to stay open and our views were nothing more than thick cloud! A bit of a disappointment but still it was a great experience to see for ourselves the real the magnitude of this world famous monument.

Last night we went to a Funk party in the favelas (shanty town / slum) to see how the poorer people like to party. The party kicked off at 12.30am and the place was hot, hot, hot with sticky bodies dancing like only Brazilians know how! This is where the gorgeous bodies of Rio were heading (men and women). The night ended at 5.30am this morning, and it was safe to say that the ´Gringos´(foreigners - that´s us!) admitted defeat and accepted that we would never be able to move like the locals.

After staying in Copacabana, which is a little like Nice or LA (i.e. runners, cute pooches, bikini, speedos etc...), we are heading into the Favelas later today to again check out how the poorer Brazilians live. These areas are well know for danger, drugs, poverty and crime, and we are going with an arm full of gifts to give something to the community especially the children. I´ll let you know in the next posting what´s it was like, but can only imagine it will be an eye opener.

As for photos, well the internet connections are ok but downloading doesn´t look to be an easy task so you may have to wait a little while, but don´t worry I´ll get onto it as I know most of you like photos as opposed to reading!!

Hope all in well with everyone, I will be in touch soon x.