Blogs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America - page 231

10pm yeahh...rio issupposed to be sunnt and happy right? bollocks! haha nothe happy part is right, meeting some GREAT people in the hostel, bob a 60 year old manchester lad and i are mates, were getting spanish lessons from antonio from madrid, hanging with an identical matt hayden twin tristian from perth, undertook a chili eating contest and ended up crying like a baby... etc etc but we cant leave the hostel! theres terential rain outside, so were doing as much as we can to amuse ourselves. Ive started (40% thru) motorcycle diaries by Che Guevera... matts reading angels and demons... playing guess who, trivial persuit and a card game called spinch. yay! thats about it. as soon as the clouds clear and the sun comes out were gonna hop strait to it andsee sugar loaf, ... read more

just seeing if this works. today we walke the beaches from copa to ipenema. we saw a surf comp, and havnt been robbed, but were keeping our fingers crossed. some of the peaks are unbelievable, cant wait to see the view from the top- gotta wait for a clear day tho. VIVA!... read more

And they´re off!! The start to our trip didn´t go quite as planned, but turned out really well for us. We turned up at Heathrow with all our bags ready to check in and were offered 405 pounds each to take the next days flight. This was too good to pass up, so we found ourselves spending our first night not in a hostel, but in the Heathrow Hilton! This meant an extra day hanging around the airport, but the free food, the indoor pool and the cash did compensate! The flight was fine, apart from being separated. Some couples might think that a blessing... not us! We changed at Sao Paulo and landed in Rio at 08:00am on the 20th. My cousin (mums cousin) picked us up and took us to our Hostel where we ... read more

Today we took Ben and Rich to the pool. From there we heard about an aquaduct which we explored then decided to try and find the water fall we heard about just a short walk away.(5 hrs later!) The trek involved near vertical hiking up and down, climbing over big boulders (didn´t see the path at the side!) When we eventually got there after getting lost in the middle of this massive jungle it was good. Rained just as we got out of the jungle. Met a group of 6 english lads who asked us the way and told them to come back another day. Chilled out for the evening. Going back to Rio tomorrow to go way south. 20 hours on a bus!... read more

We have had bad weather since we got here but we kept an eye on the forcast. So when we got to Ilha Grande (an island just south of Rio) we had red hot weather! It is a beautiful tropical island covered in jungle and beaches. This morning we started walking up a massive hill/mountain (the island is one big lump of jungly rock) to get to Lopes Mendes beach which is a 2.5hours walk. After 20mins of sweat and achy legs we gave in and turned back to take the east route on the boat. (we weren´t even going in the right direction anyway!) Jumped on a small boat for an hour to take us round the island. When we got there we were disappointed. It was a nice beach but not in the top ... read more