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Published: February 22nd 2013
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So for the first three days we were in Rio we really had no intention of going to the Sambadrome because of the inflated cost of tickets but after speaking to people from the hostel every morning, hearing what an amazing atmosphere it was, we soon changed our minds and bought two tickets for the last parade on the Monday night. It was the best night we had in Rio. Whether it was down to the litre of cheap rum we drank or the buzzing atmosphere I'm not sure . The Sambadrome is made up of two long lines of grandstands flanking a concrete runaway where samba schools parade to impress the audience and the judges. The parades featured giant, weird and wonderful floats and they were surrounded with thousands of beating drums and amazing dancers. The dancers costumes and the floats were so intricate that they must of took months and months to make. Each parade from each of the samba schools was like a giant wave of colours and each one lasted around an hour. There were 6 samba schools performing and our favourite was Beija Flor. We didn't really have much choice in this as we befriended two
local Brazilian girls sat behind us and their favourite was Beija Flor. They were so cute! We danced for about 6 and a half hours and by the end had learnt all the words for our favourite teams song. We managed to see 4 out of the 6 processions and called it a night at 4am. We didn't actually get home till about 5 though as Jon wanted to carry on dancing all the way home! We spent a few days on Rio's most famous beach Copacabana, 4.5km of golden sands and cool, refreshing waves. The beach was crowded with so many people of all shapes and sizes. I have never seen so many g-string bikinis and some were not such a pretty sight! You could never really nap on the beach as every 5 minutes you had locals trying to sell you something so we spent a lot of time people watching...my favourite. I flashed a lot of people one day as the waves were pretty strong which resulted in my bikini coming pretty much completely off. Jon found it hilarious!! Our favourite beach though was Ipanema as the water was clearer, the sand was a lot whiter and
the g-string bums were a lot nicer. There were also not so many tourists there but we only managed to go the once due to a lot of bloccos taking place there. The Favela Tour was easily the most interesting and eye opening experience during our stay in Rio. The tours have been set up to help improve the Favelas and to empower the people who live there. We got off the bus and almost every single person was staring at us. "Just act normal and don't get in anyones way and you'll be fine" our tour guide, Patrick said. It was safe to say we were both a little apprehensive. We started our tour through the favelas walking down very narrow paths and trying desperately not to get in the locals ways or tread in dog or perhaps human poo. The smell was pretty horrendous and the conditions the residents have to live in were pretty awful. We headed up some steps and were shown the view of the Favela and were told that 1.5 million people from Rio lived in Favelas out of a population of 15 million. The houses the locals lived in were small concrete squares
that were probably no bigger than your living room with the odd bullet hole in the side. We carried on our tour being showed both negative and positive things and were informed of the pacification that took place 14 months before we got there . The government had gone in to try and stamp out the drug gangs and to work with the community to improve living conditions and this is still on going. As we carried on with the tour, a group of young kids performed a samba routine for us ( I wanted to kidnap quite a few cuties), we were shown into gang areas where gunfire had once broken out and people had been killed and then just to lighten up the mood we got to try out some of the locals baking where Jon went straight for the chocolate cake. A really great part of the trip was seeing the nursery that is funded by the tour we went on, it was nice to see people of the favelas benefiting from us being there. A not so great part of the trip was me splashing shit all up the back of my legs as I thought
it would be a good idea to wear Havianas for the trip! Overall our time in Rio was a great one and we got to see and experience some incredible things in such a short time. I think we are ready to leave for a bit of peace and downtime in Ilha Grande now, where we will no doubt be spending most our time sleeping, sunbathing and more sleeping!! P.s I guess a few of you are wondering whether my stomach coped for the seven days we were in Rio. The answer is.................NO!!!!!! I am now only left with one pair of white pants instead of two!!!! Ciao xx
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