Rio

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Alright i have mixed feelings about rio... somethings i absoulty love others not so much. It all began when i got off at the bus terminal in centro rio. yes once again i was unprepared and i turned up at 9:00pm i didn´t want to but that was the way the bus schedule from sao paulo worked out.

anyways i am rushed straight into a taxi where the guy had me lined up right from the start... he first pulled the the meter dosn´t work line... so i said fine i will agree on a price. (i should have just got out but it is easier said than done when he is driving on the highway.)

then he picks up his mate who he said he had to give a lift for even though i said i didn´t think it was a good idea. then at the end of it all we got to the destination ok (thank god) but he pulled the oh that is 40 reais rather than the original 20 we agreed on because of traffic or something i couldn´t understand then when i was argueing with him and i finally gave him the money his partner was switching my 20 reais note for a fiver ... even tho i was being stooged i couldn´t get out of paying him the extra money because there were two of them yelling at me saying i wasn't paying the fare... and to be honest i didn´t want to get into any more trouble than i was already in so i was abosultey ripped of like 50 reais.... not a great introduction to rio but yeah i put it off as the gringo tax.

Close to carnival time Rio was expensive as expected and the weather wasn´t fantastic either so i only stayed 3 days checking out the sights...

The first day i set out and saw ipanema and copacobana as the cloud cover was real bad and i didn't want to pay the cash to climb sugarloaf or the corcovado and not see anything.
It was a pretty chilled day but to be honest i didn't like walking around by myself here as i felt like a complete tourist and every one was ripping me off or approaching me to buy something.

so the next day was pan de azugar (sugar loaf mountain) and the corcovado (christ the redeemer) and then the maracana (but no photos of the stadium as it was in a dodgey area and i didn´t want to get ripped off again).

basically your typical tourist visit but i did manage to venture into a favela with a tour and watch a rehersal for carnaval which was quite good.

the best thing about rio is that i have meet some really great guys which are heading the same way so hopefully we will meet up again for carnaval anyways i will write again from puerto seguro.

ciao

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