Day 1

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Day 1- 22nd Feb

7:30- Craig leaves Newport with family in tow, Tom leaves Leicester at 7:30.

9:30- Both meet at Terminal 5, Heathrow. Check in and say our goodbyes, no tears from the boys, which Tom was very impressed with!

12:00pm- Board the Boeing 777, seats 37 a and b. We are sitting on the runway for an hour waiting to take off, due to BA's incapacity to clean the aircraft in time for takeoff!

9:45pm- (Rio De Janeiro time)- Land at Rio International, manage to get through customs without any problems and our taxi man waiting with the board- TOM WALTON. Happy days, we are onto a winner here mate!

10:45pm- Still at Rio airport, there is huge issues with cash points. Hundreds of them but only a couple that had english translations, we are so ignorant! We finally realise that we can only take out BR$100 after 10pm. Great.

T

We head down to the central parking lot with our dirty gringo juan and head into Rio to find our party hostel......on route we see the mass number of favelas and begin to realise what a dump the outskirts of rio are, we stop for gas and take a minute to get our breath back after the 250mph rally driving juan had just introduced us too.

We get into central rio and it begins resembalise urban spain, we turn down four back streets and onto a street where there is about 90 people in the road stood outside bars and clubs juan pulls over and mumbles somin...no shit this is us? lol respect. we are located in the centre on a street that looks like it hosts four brothels and seven strip joints....we have arrived!

We settle up with Juan and pick up our bags and press the buzzer, coolio comes on the speaker phone and we get into the reception. 1st problem....michelle who we booked with is out getting hammered and coolio has been left to sort us out...great “no a speaka english” after a 30min sign language conversation we get shown to our private room? double bed? this aint what we booked? we think coolio said we wud crash in this room tonight until michelle comes back 2mo, then we will get put in the mixed dorm. It was abit of a blessing in disguise because we had our own space to sort our stuff out! Anyway, so we are jet lagged, smelly, tired and whats tom wanna do “lets go find some beer” we chat to some people in the common room and they explain that to get beer at this time of night you go onto the party street and buy 5 beers from a local. We venture outside we our mini rucksacks (because we dont have a locker key yet) in search for beer....we take five steps and everyone is looking at us, 2 white ass English backpackers.....”nah sod this, its 2am and we are shattered, lets go to bed and get fooked 2mos night”

Bed.

C

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