'Like a sexy chicken, she will come home to roost'

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Our all you can eat bbq was as tasty as expected, however unfortunetly they ate so late we were already halfway to being drunk by the time it was served and therefore did not take full advantage! There wasnt much on this evening so Amelia headed for an early night thinking Lily would be following shortly.. she turned up hours later very drunk! Our next few days consisted of more sunbathing, and a very exciting trip to the cinema and pizza hut with Rossa as it was tipping it down with rain! We enjoyed several more nights out, (a favourite moment of ours being when George, an english boy, started boasting as he thought he had got in the club for free, not realising you pay on the way out and ended up having to use his card) and on our last night there was only a few people left staying at the hostel so the bar closed early and the staff played drinking games with us before we headed to a Samba bar... however we didnt get there until 3am, and they refused to let us in as it was closing! Lily however decided that she wasnt ready to go back to the hostel and ran off up the sand dunes!

The next day we were told we could get a bus to Rio at 2pm from the centre of town and so decided to do this. We had to first get a local bus there and went to wait for this. After 45 minutes, having not seen a bus (which supposedly come every 10mins) in either direction we sent Ross to investigate, he came back saying Conrad the receptionist forgot to tell us there was a bus strike on today, typical! We tried to get a taxi, which wasnt easy and by the time one came, we were sceptical to whether we could make it in time but totally made the best out of the situation! Firstly when we got in the taxi there was no seatbelts, then we got stuck in traffic! Finally we got to bus station and a man claimed there was no cash machine, however we wandered around and practically walked into one! We managed to get money out easily for once and went to get our ticket, which was about 40 reals each off of the internet price! The ticket man then got all confused and gave us about 80 reals change instead of 20, so it was such a cheap ride! Luckily the bus was majorly comfy, we had disabled seats so had loads of room (slightly awkward when lil did her disabled impression and the bus attendant was watching). We also perfectly navigated ourselves to our hostel! Only had slight trouble getting through the bus turnstyle thing with our bags and everyone was laughing at us!

Our first stop in Rio was Ipanema beach, which was right outside our hostel! After an hour or so of sunbathing, our light was blocked by a giant inflatable turtle and we looked up to see Alan, the American from our room in Flori, holding it. He joined us and we spent the next couple of hours catching up. That evening we went out for dinner with Diva and Aneeka (2 of the english girls from Flori) and Pablo, our Brazilian friend from Thailand. We tried some local food, helped by Pablo who did all the ordering for us! We opted for a night in as we wanted to get up early the next day and headed back to our hostel (to find several drunk aussies in our room). The following morning we went to Copacabana beach where we were planning to meet Cormac (who it turns out arrived just after we got bored and left) and Pablo (who slept all day), but after a while left as it was so hot and Lily didnt feel too good. We did a bit of food shopping (found edam which exicted us so much we ate chunks of it walking down the street, nice cheese is hard to come by abroad!) We then got the bus to Sugarloaf and took the cable car up, getting lots of nice photos of the amazing view! As Lil was still feeling a bit under the weather (Flori had caught up with her) we bought lots of little pasteries from the bakery and had a little feast in our room before having another early night. The next day we had planned to do the Christ Redeemer, however it was tipping it down, we got the bus there but seeing the thick mist in the air decided it would not be worth going up, as we would see nothing, so decided to do a bit of shopping instead. We met Pablo again in the evening to get some food and a strange iced tea he promised would be nice but wasnt and then headed off to the airport around 12am. We got there 30 minutes later, but our flight check in wasnt until half 3 so we tried napping on the cold hard floor, wasn't comfy, but we woke up to find ourselves at the front of the queue, ideal! It took 3 seperate flights to get to LA, so we were completely knackered when we arrived, luckily the hostel we had booked (well Stephen had kindly booked for us) offered a free pick up. As we stood waiting to check in, our english friend Hardy who we met in Australia walked through the door and told us not to check in as he had done it for us, and took us to his room where he had moved us to. Instead of a dorm we now had a big room with a queen sized bed, with Hardy next door and our own bathroom, for the same price! We were desperate to sleep but Hardy had lots of stories to tell us first, it turned out we were staying in the ghetto and he had seen plenty of strange people, and a girl he was chatting to had been whisked away in an ambulance- having been to private school and coming from a very priviliged background, he had led a quite sheltered life and was shocked by what he saw! We slept well that night and woke up to find Hardy had bought us breakfast in bed! After watching a bit of the Queen's Jubilee celebrations on tv we headed out to a huge outdoor shopping centre, which felt like we were walking around Disneyland! We bought huge cheesecake slices from the cheesecake factory and went to a diner for our first burgers and chilli chips, an incredible invention! We bought some fruit to try and balance it out, and headed back to our hostel stuffed!We had been invited to a house party by Hardy's friend in LA, however by the time we were back and lying on our comfy beds, we decided instead to have a night in watching a film and munching the free popcorn! The next day we took the free shuttle to the beach and sunbathed for half the day (Hardy didnt take his top off and ended up with hilarious t shirt tan lines) and then headed to Taco Bell, which we decided we had to try whilst here! (pretty tasty and so cheap!) Back at the hostel we decided to brave the pool, jumped in, and found it was heated! Felt like a giant bath, was amazing! Only once we got out did we realise we had no towels, thankfully a nice man came and gave us some! After a dodgy taxi ride and a lot of navigating public transport we arrived at the greyhound bus terminal... an experience in itself. There was clearly a lot of 'characters' about. As Amelia finally reached the front of the ticket queue, a man pushing his wheelchair came in, threw his bags to the side, sat in his chair and then tried to get the ticketmen's attention, as they were already serving people they tried to ignore him, until he started shouting 'I'm F**king disabled!' as he did, a man with a bleeding head (blood everywhere) strolled past and yelled 'get over it!'. We found this hilarious, and couldnt stop laughing, Hardy however went bright red and looked very scared! By the time we got to the bus, which wasnt easy with the pushing in the queue ('out the way asshole!'😉 Hardy looked ready to cry if he had to sit with a stranger so Amelia gave him her seat and we set off for San Fran!

xoxo

Amelia & Lily

(We are at Tim and Jill's already but this entry is so long, the rest of our American adventures will follow soon!)

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