Cheerio Rio...

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This was written when we left Rio but the internet crashed at the vital moment.

Backtracking a little, Tuesday night wasn´t exactly as expected. We ended up in Lapa via a circuitous route, sat there and just watched the world go by. Although this sounds quite uneventful it was actually quite enjoyable.

Next up we visited a favela, on our own and when the police were apparently on strike. We ascended an interesting version of a cable car that felt like it might break any minute and then wandered down through the narrow paths amidst chickens, dogs, cats and the occasional toothbrush. It was so higgledy-piggledy that it could have been designed by an architect, but I´m guessing they don´t need planning permission there.

After the scrum of Copacabana, Botofogo beach was completely empty, which meant only one thing - frisbee time. With varying degrees of success we threw it around with Dutchy (our originally-named Dutch friend). Since the busiest road in Rio runs right past the beach, throwing the frisbee onto it wasn´t a good idea. Unfortunately an ill-placed throw from George nearly took off a motorcyclist´s head (he claims it hit an air pocket).

We bought some Cachaca as well as some Caju juice. Caju is what we later discovered is cashew nut juice. It is absolutely disgusting. I think it´s fair to say neither will be featuring on our shopping list again.

Next day we had to move accommodation to a fairly nice (and orange) hotel (yeah, hotel not hostel - living the dream!). The rooms were quite small but had air con, TV and minibar so we definitely weren´t complaining. By then we seemed to have done most of the touristy things, so the past couple of days we have been occupying ourselves with slightly more mundane things like sawing off toenails with a penknife, standing for half an hour in a supermarket queue and sorting out bank problems, each of which presented a less gringo-style view of Rio. We still found time to visit yet another beach, this time Flamengo which is a hop, skip and jump away from the hotel.

Our burns have gone, only to be replaced by flaky skin (see picture) normally associated with lepresy. George tried to buy some fake tan to cover it up but only succeeded in getting perfume (we´re still getting to grips with the language barrier, but have expanded our vocabulary to include the Portuguese for 211, our room number).

Our final night in Rio marked the start of Carnaval proper and it lived up to expectations. We went to Lapa (again) to be greeted by an innumerable mass of people all dancing to the beat of the samba. The best places were under the arches where there were drums echoing. The highlight of the night was a group of Brazilians (and Charlie) singing 'Baby' by Justin Bieber at George much to his bemusement because they thought he looked like him. George´s highlight was the mosh pit in the middle of the street with loads of people jumping up and down crazily to the music. Charlie had his pockets rummaged but fortunately caught the bugger mid-action and he scurried off. Cha-ching.

Needless to say, having nodded off/collapsed we slept through our alarms and rushed out of the hotel to get the bus. Find out next time if we got to our intended destination, Ilha Grande.

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Photos

Favela
Charlie in Favela

Favela
George in Favela

Football
George playing football on Flamengo Beach

Unbelievable Tekkers!
Locals playing football

Chilling
Charlie chilling on Flemengo Beach