Hey Everybody,

So it has been our first 3 days in South America spent in Rio De Janeiro. So far, very surprisingly, there have been no disasters. We flew into Sao Paulo first and managed to make our connection into Rio and collected all our luggage all ok and made it to our Hostel in Botafogo, which is between Central Business Rio and Copacabana beach.

The first day was spent exploring Botafogo, despite serious tiredness from 16 hour plane ride, and trying to find some munch. Botafogo is most definitely not a touristy part of Rio and it took us a few hours to find anywhere that was remotely decent and our first steak of South America was bloody delicious. Then we chilled on a eerily deserted Botafogo beach in the slightly overcast but warm weather. In the evening we were planning to go to Ipanema, a nice and trendy area next to Copacabana, for some munch and some drinks. We decided to be adventorous and take the metro...we actually ended up in Copacabana, ie really dodgy at night, and ate at a restaurant, which happened to be the hub of the prostitution trade in Rio. Anyway, we made it back alright and had some traditional Brazilian cuisine.

Second day, after 11 odd hours of sweaty sleep later, we headed to Ipanema to try and find a hostel there as the area is a lot nicer, has more international hostels, loads of nice bars/clubs and restaurants and the beach is crammed full of beautiful Brazilian women prancing along in thongs. Nice. Unfortunately, for those reasons all the hostels were booked up so we had to stay at our hostel in Botafogo, no big deal, but slightly dissapointed. We nearly rented a 14th floor luxury flat with a sea view balcony from this dodgy guy called Vimicio but decided against it. This guy also tried to mug us but Frank and I scared him off. Oh yeh. Our only real struggle right now is conversing with the locals...we are ok at Spanish but Portugese is a whole different kettle of fish. Each day we are learning a new phrase/word each and can just about order a couple of metro tickets.

Third day, we explored Rio´s Centro area - full of colonial buildings, nice parks, museums etc. Basically, we took in a load of culture. We also have Favela tours and party, Hang Gliding and other tours booked in Rio for the next 3 days. Should be awesome.

A few things to note about Rio:

- The Women. Wow.

- Loads of beggers and prostitutes.

- Beautiful beaches and landscape´s.

- English is barely spoken by anyone. Learn Portugese to a good standard before you come.

- Random musical raves in the shops and the streets at any time of the day and night are awesome and common.