New. Years. Eve.

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This night was one of the key reasons for heading out when we did and the reason Laura had come out to meet us... it had to be amazing, didn't it? New years eve is definitely one of those things which can never live up to the hype, but we were definitely going to try! The girls and I were set on having a cracking night together, and after having such a shambolic time trying to keep everyone together at Christian's birthday, we wanted to make sure there was no frustrating hanging about - people were desperate to go out together, so I just said, OK, well you guys do whatever but we will be leaving at 7.30 - with or without you, to set off for Copa.

During the day we'd got supplies, some bubbly, some beverage of choice (Guarana and vodka for me), some ice, a cool bag and cachaca for caipirinhas. We got our stuff together, all put our pretty dresses on, and to my absolute amazement, everybody from the hostel was ready to go. When I say everybody:
Us 4
Team Jersey - 3
Matt and Ryan
Team Oz - 4
Finnish - 2
UK Boys - 5
Jim, Colt and Chris
Christian
Argentina - 4
Dutch - 2

Exactly 30 od us out poddling the streets of Brazil with our final destination of Copacabana, in a sea of white - we got whooped and hollered at on our walk down there and disappointingly when we got to the beach only about half of the people were in white! But it was cool nonetheless. We spent the next several hours being very silly, we samba;d, we conga'd with and without music, we did the limbo, built human pyramids, the aussies performed the single ladies dane and we generally ran around like madheads! Amy restrained the scouser on a dare, Laura downed vodka at the request of brazilians, Tasha rolypolied off the top of the human pyramid and i was spun around and landed in the middle of a brazilian family!

NYE was also the first time the country unveiled the Rio 2016 olympic symbols - more impressive than London's but not significantly. But the really cool thing was that they pulled out a giant flag over the audience about 50 metres away from us! Obviously we ran towards it and jumped up and down under it, Amy couldn't reach so I picked her up so she could then promptly dropped her. Lots of fun, felt like we were part of something unique, and we hadn't even got to midnight yet!

Intrue Biritsh style we didn't do things by halves and celebrated Polish new year (random polish singing at 9pm) British new year (at 10pm) cue Auld Lang Syne, and then we prepared ourselves for the ultimate tempos brazilianos! As the clock struck twelve the fireworks, photos, hugs and kisses began - it was a really emotional moment for all of us, some even cried! There were 15 minutes of incredible fireworks to classical music and the photos cannot demonstrate how beautiful it was. The 4 of us, and everyone else, just had an incredible time and there was not one disappointing moment - maybe we could do this eery year!

On the way home we did what any true brazilian should do - bought a pasty and got a taxi back - it was the cheapest new year - and sorry girls - it beat Newcastle hands down!

02/01
New years day was a write off, not because of hangovers but more because Brazil appeared to be shut! Other than a very athletic run, nothing of note happened.

We decided to try and take the tra up to Santa Teresa, the tram is really famous and Santa Teresa is the hippy bit of town - it also gave me a chance to look around the Sao Sebastiao cathedral to take pictures. We walked to the tram stop and the queue was HUGE - EPIC FAILURE. We tried to get a taxi but apparently (and it makes sense), the tram's the only way up. Instead we decided to go to the Botanical Gardens which were also very cool - Tasha got very excited to see tortoises - WARNING - they bite! We saw plants and trees from all over the world, Japanese gardens, amazon plantlife, amazing orchards and statues and fountains - it was a really beautiful day and a reat way to spend our last day for a few weeks with team Jersey - and we took the bus and everything!

That night we went all Irish and met up with Andrew and his girlfriend Diaina for dinner at an Irish pub in Rio, we had nachos, chicken wings and beer as we said goodbye to Andrew who we had spent so much time in Brazil with, it was a really chilled out way to end our time in Rio.

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