Rio!

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Well, Rio was the final big city and ´highlight´ before I head home. It´s really an amazing beautiful place and so much bigger than I´d imagined. It has got a slightly dodgy side (and reputation). I´d heard lots of scare stories about muggings from lots of other travellers, including one guy who was mugged at knifepoint by a group of 12 year old boys- scary!
Thankfully I was very lucky and wasn´t victim to anything dodgy at all- phew!

Brazil has proven to be the most expensive of all the countries I´ve visited so far. Hostels in most other cities have been around the 5 pound mark a night, whereas in Rio it was between 8 and 10 pounds a night. There is so much to see and do that you have to give it at least a few days to see all the sights (and have some time for the beach of course!) I was there for 6 days, and still feel I could return there with new things to see.

I´d been so excited to see Rio because of the combination of beach, city and mountain all mashed together. You get amazing views when you visit the massive statue of Christ and take the cable car up Sugar Loaf mountain. After laughing at all the other tourists doing a cheesy imitation pose of the statue, I couldn´t resist having one of my own, but it was so cheesy that I´m embarassed to put it on my blog!!! I didn´t realise at the time, but the day when I visited Sugar Loaf was the first day they used their new and improved cable cars. Very nice!

The beaches of course were wonderful, apart from I couldn´t get Barry Manilow tunes out of my head when sunbathing in Copacabana!! They were so busy at the weekend when there were thousands of people sunbathing and loads of vendors selling bikinis, sunglasses, prawns and grilled cheese!

Ipanema beach is divided into sections depending what kind of person you are. There is the surf section, the gay section, the beautiful people section and the family section. Although I obviously belonged in the beautiful people section(!) I decided not to make the Brazilian hotties feel inadequate and sunbathed on the surfer section instead! Seriously though, the number of bottoms on display there was amazing! And despite the stereotype of Brazilian women having fabulous bodies, there were all different shapes and sizes of arses hanging out!

Other highlights included drinking at the street bars in an area called Lapa (the strongest drinks I´ve had in my life- I was drunk after one drink!), seeing a very bizarre Cathedral (see pics) and meeting an Artist called Selaron who has been decorating the stairs when he lives with tiles for the last 18 years! Really cool!

Not long til I´m home now! Really excited!

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