We finally made it to Rio on 16th February, that night it was the final main parade in the Sambadrome, we´d thought we couldn´t get tickets but we ended up getting some through our hotel but that wasn´t until later on that night at 8.30pm so we decided to go for a walk around in the afternoon.

We were on a mission to find somewhere that was playng the Preston North End v Man U game later on that day, Casson had a North End T Shirt on and we´d literally walked 5 minutes from our hotel when a guy who was busking shouted "you must be the only other North End fan in Brazil". This made Casson´s day!

We walked down to Copacabana beach and it was absolutely mental. There was music on every corner, people dancing, selling beer on the street, people in fancy dress etc, it was brilliant. We decided to get into the carnival spirit and get on the beers whilst walking round.

Several beers later, we headed back to the hotel to get changed and then went to watch the match (and have a few pitchers of beer), after the match finished we realised we needed to eat before the sambadrome so we both shovelled a burger in and then headed to the parade.

The sambodrome is absolutely amazing, it´s packed to the rafters with about 70,000 people and just has a brilliant atmosphere. We were in a none specified seated area, a little like bleachers but people get there from 4/5pm to get a seat so by the time we got there at 9pm we were right at the top standing, it was so cramped and mega hot but it was still brilliant.

After the first parade had finished I suddenly felt really sick so I tried to make my way to the toilet but it was just so busy that you couldn´t get down the steps, then my ears started to ring and everything sounded really far away which means I´m about to feint so rather than go down like a ton of bricks taking out everyone on the steps I just had to sit down and was completely in everyones way, Casson was panicking as he said i´d gone grey, a guy selling drinks was putting water on my head, and a girl was fanning me with her porgramme! What a way to make a total prat of yourself! It all passed pretty quickly and after about 5 minutes I was back stood at the top but I stayed on water for the rest of the night whilst Casson drank both our share of beer :-)

We can´t really decribe how amazing the parade was, the costumes, the music, the floats, the themes, everything was unreal! It was a brilliant night, but by 5.30am (when we were getting picked up) we were both done in and ready to go home!

The next day we pretty much slept till 2pm and then we got the tube in the afternoon to Ipanema as there was a blocco (street party) and the Ipanema band who are really famous at Carnival were playing. This was another mad day/night, people are drinking bottles of vodka on the street, the beer is flowing and the atmosphere is really friendly. Just before the band came down the street we started talking to 2 older couples who had been on a cruise and one of the couples was from the village I grew up in, there must have been 20,000 people there that day so it really is a small world! When the band came down the street we have never seen anything like it, the crowd surges with it and follows it along the route they take so you literally cannot move for bodies!

We ended up talking to a group of Argentinian lads who were really nice and we spent the rest of the night with them partying next to the beach. At one point it started raining and it was torrential, we wouldn´t have been any wetter if we´d gone swimming in the sea but it didn´t matter as people just partied harder. It was a brilliant experience!

Sighteeing wise we visited the botanical gardens (whilst hungover so I hated it, I spent most of my time lying on a bench whilst Casson was taking pictures of flowers or something else I couldn´t have been less interested in). Sugar Loaf mountain had brillaint views, Christ the Redeemer was awesome up close due to its size but it was so crowded it was uncomfortable so we didn´t spend long there.

We also did a favella tour which was really interesting, neither of us realised why the favellas were so famous as they´re basically classed as slums and there are slums all over the world but it´s because they are/were so lawless. There are a 1000 favellas in Brazil and before some of them were pacified they were a no go area for everyone, including the police. Drugs were dealt openly on the street and if anyone entered who didn´t belong there they would be shot (police as well).

When the government made a decision to pacify them they started a programme of the police controlling the favellas, so far 43 have been pacified. What this mean though is that a lot of people lost their jobs i.e. the number of drug dealers needed diminished as now drugs were dealt underground and not out in the open so less people were needed and this pushed these people into the tourist areas such as Copacabana and Ipanema were they target the tourists, pick pocket etc. Also a policeman in the favella will be paid 2000 Reals a month which is not enough to live on so the drug dealers pay them 2000 Reals a week to look the other way. In trying to solve a problem another problem is created.

The tour itself into the favella was really good, there is poverty there but there isn´t misery, they are happy, they live better than some of the people living in the towns. A lot of people live on land that they claimed years agos (after 10 years if no one disputed your claim it became yours), they don´t pay for electricity or gas and as their family grows they build on top of their original house making it 3/4/5 stories high and so have many incomes coming in.

Our final tour we did was of the Maracana stadium, we´d been out the night before and got in about 5am so we were both knackered and Casson was a bit hungover so I got my own back on him dragging me round the botanical gardens and made him go to the stadium. Once there though he totally perked up because he loved it, he was like a fat kid in a cake shop!

All in all we absolutely loved Rio, considering we don´t like cities there is something about this place that just sucks you in, we ended up staying 7 nights instead of the 4 we had planned.

General Points

1) The golden arches in Rio let us down, whipped cheese on our burger!!!!!! Grim

2) Casson now thinks he can samba and does this at every opportunity, walking down the street, in the supermarket .... this has to stop :-)