South America

Hey guys. First entry by me here - thought I´d put my own mark on his blog.

Have loved carnival week and experienced amazing sights. Still can´t do samba for toffee, still can´t hack the pure alcohol cocktails and not quite sure if I´ll ever return from the nocturnal state Rio has forced me into, but I sure am smiling.

Was the Gay Ball at scala last night, felt like a VIP walking up the red carpet with the crowds cheering us on and the TV crew. Fantastic atmosphere with live samba band to dance to and loads of queens dressed (using the term lightly) to the nines. Wearing little more than hotpants, a garter, feathers and glitter wig I felt right at home, must admit the cocktails helped. Missed our first trip meeting this morning so unsure of the itinery and who´s in our group but I will hold no responsibility (or guilt), 10am after the ball, madness if they think we were ever going to attend it.

The sambadrome the other night was fantastic, who´d have thought it was possible to snowboard on a carnival float. They must spend thousands on the costumes. The top 12 samba schools compete in the finale and each one takes about an hour to walk the length of the sambadrome with the crowd going mental, just one bugbear, parade lasts an hour - their song lasts abou 10 seconds, its on repeat, non stop, again and again...I´m never going to get them out of my head.

Love Rio, love the views from sugar loaf moutain, love the carnival, not so keen on its rain (my fingers are like prunes) but its all been good fun.

Thats it -I´m done. Bedtime.

On the 4th feb we went to a tour of the favelas. Ive seen the film City of God, which is based in a favela, so was expecting bullets to be flying around our heads and drug dealers shooting people for stepping onto their patch. I was a bit on-edge about safety and not sure about the morality of seeing some of the poorest people in the country for pleasure, but the tours put some money back into the community and give money to schools and health centres, so thats ok.

We travelled to the favela on the back of an army jeep (which was an experience in itself), and the guide took us around the favela on foot. The favela didnt meet my expectations at all. The people were not threatening in any way, and seemed to be ok with us walking about. The favela is like any other city, with the main shopping street, water and electricity (although a lot of people make illegal connections to the supply), even a bank. The trip wasnt disappointing though, the architecture is amazing - if someone wants to move there, they just build their house on top of someone elses. The houses are so close together that the side streets are barely the width of 1 person. There arent official addresses for the houses, they collect their post at the post office. The favela we went to is the largest and houses about 200,000 people.

The 2nd Feb is the official start of the carnival and things started to get really busy. We went back into Lapa the following night for a free outside concert. It has rained pretty much every day so far, if only for a few minutes, so we found some shelter under a street bar and waited for the rain to stop. About an hour later, the rain still hadnt stopped but a lot more liquid had passed our lips (the cocktails here are over 50% spirits) and we were in the mood for dancing. Somehow the rain didnt seem to bother anyone and it was hot anyway, so it was kind of refreshing. We danced till about 4am until we were completely drenched. Even my underpants were soaking. On the way home we got thrown out of a taxi because we had caused massive puddles on the back seat.

You can see my nipples through my drenched t-shirt.

The next day we were feeling pretty rough so didnt do much during the day. We had to leave early for the carnival anyway and knew we had a long night ahead of us. We got to the carnival at about 6.30 (it starts at 9) to get our seats. Everyone from our tour was there so we were in a group of over 100 people. The atmosphere was amazing - we didnt really know what to expect, but when we saw the processions it completely blew us away. We were in sector 13, which are the cheapest seats, right at the end of the procession, so all the dancers were knackered by the time they got to us. It takes about 45mins to get from the start to the end, so we could really see the relief in the dancers faces when they crossed over the finish line. The parade has to be seen to be believed.

Here are some photos - Ive got a few videos as well, but my camera ran out of batteries at the internet cafe, so check back here in a couple of days.

Hi
The internet at the hotel is really expensive so ill have to be quick. I also cant find the apostrophe on this foreign keyboard so my grammar will be a bit off (as usual)

The journey to get here was pretty boring so I thought I would liven things up by leaving our passports and all my travellers cheques on the plane when we transferred flights at Lisbon. There was a brief 20 minutes of panic when we thought that maybe someone had stolen them and we even talked about having to go back to Liverpool to get a new passport when an airport worker sprinted across the airport to deliver us the wallet with both our passports intact and all the money still there. Luckily (or because of us) the connecting flight was delayed by an hour and we managed to get on the flight and sleep for the most part.

The hotel we got to was really nice. We booked this one seperately to the organised trip and the quality was really good. They recommended a restaurant which is a buffet, except when you get to the end you put your food on scales and you pay by weight. Dee loved this idea because most of the food she eats is really light anyway. She had her fill of salad leaves and bread.

In the morning we woke up to this sight from our window

Which was amazing.

We checked out and headed for the excursion company hotel which had this view from our window

Which was less amazing.

On the first night of the organised events was a trip to a cheesy, expensive disco, which we didnt fancy. We went into town instead. We were told not to take much money, valuables (no camera) or any jewelery because it can get a bit "crazy" at night, which sounded like a good night to us. When we got there the atmosphere was electric with samba schools drumming madly and people drinking caipirinhas and partying in the street. The only thing i can compare it to is Notting Hill Carnival but without the organisation (or toilets). None of the roads were closed, despite hundreds of people dancing around the cars and buses and police presence was minimal. We didnt feel threatened at all and i wish i took my camera now.

Today we went to see Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf mountain, so here are the obligtory tourist shots.

Im not sure what we are doing tonight but tomorrow night we are going to the sambadrome to see the carnival proccession.