Hitting the beaches in Brazil!

---

We arrived in Rio at 6am and hailed a taxi to take us to our hostel in Santa Teresa. I had been warned about their driving skills, but oh my god! its scary. We arrived at our hostels road, but the driver couldnt find the hostel and was going mental he was even explaining that it did not even excist. Coincidently this is the only hostel we have pre-booked and we did it in England through STA. so it definately did exist! so eventually he finds it. We checked in and because we have a private room we are taken to a hotel down the road called teh Alicante. This is because the hostel does not have double rooms. Good, except the hotel we were taken to was like a sleezy 1980s american motel room. But it did have a bed and it has air conditioning and its currently boiling and only 7.30am - this is not a very good climate for us ginges.

Anywat we settle in and head for Copacabana beach via the metro as we have a appointment to pick up are carnival tickets at a beach front hotel at 12 noon. On the metro we find ourselves caught in the middle of a stampede of carnival and party go-ers all dressed up and ready to have a massive street party only a few streets away from our hotel. The vibe around the hotel and this street intimidates me a little as we are completely new to the area and the whole place wreaks of pee - nice!

We find ourselves at the beach thanks to a nice helpful tranny, who kept counting down the stops for us. We did collect are tickets ok and were going to take them back to the safety of the hotel but we decided it was far to far and too hot and we wanted to get on the beach and improve on our tans. After sitting for an half and hour to an hour in the scorching sun we decided it was far too hot and walked along the beach front. We found ourselves caught in the middle of another blocco (street party) and after walking for 20 minutes we hit another beach - the Ipanema. This one was far busier and contained far more locals. They kept asking for food and most of them looked like they were from street gangs so we decided we definately prefered the other beach - by the way in the mean time we have eaten, i just prefer to keep these blogs as brief as possible, unlike Ant.

Having had too much sun for our first day we head back to the metro via a supermarket, where Ant buys a 6 pack of huge water - good idea at the time, but as a metro with mini riots - definately not the best idea in retrospect. It been a long past 2 days with about 4 hours sleep so we get some tea and head to bed.

My feeling of Rio is that its mad, a party town and quite poor in parts, but anything goes. I like it. The beaches are white and the sky is blue and it feels tropical and im dead excited for tommorow night too.

p.s. we went to the Havaiana store where you can get personalised flip-flops, and for really cheap as well. Well good!

---