It was quite surreal to be waking up in the insane city I have always wanted to visit - RIO DE JANEIRO!

I got picked up from the hostel in the morning to visit the favelas - the massive slums that around 20 million people live in, throughout Brazil. The favela we visited was called Rocinha, and is the largest in Rio de Janeiro with a population of 300,000. The guide that took us through was as rough as guts and engaged to one of the drug dealers in the gang that controlled this favela. The favelas are always run solely by the drug dealers, who provide the money for education, hospitals and other necessities within the favela. There are constant gun fights between the drug dealers and the corrupt police, who are trying to 'clean the favela up' and gain control of the people living there. The night before we toured this favela, two police were shot dead while they were trying to infiltrate a drug dealers house....heavy. These slums also have another really interesting feature - they all have cable television, for free! The cable companies provided each favela with a satellite, and set up an account for each family, but these people just refused to pay, and no one in their right mind would walk into a favela full of army style artillery to demand the payment for the cable, so they just get it for free! The same goes for electricity and water, everyone outside of the favela is too s*** scared to go into them that they have given it up for free!

Land in favela's is also free, any space you see, you can claim it. People will build a house, and then sell their roof for around 2000 reais to another family, who will then build on top of it and so on and so forth. It seems like such a crazy lifestyle but it really does work for these people. We visted a small bakery within the favela which sold the nicest brigadeiro (brazilian dessert which is like chocolate cake batter in a ball) I have ever had. At the end of the tour, we walked over the famous bridge that is in the shape of a womans big arse and a g-string on...only in Brazil.

I got dropped off to my new hostal - Che Lagarto in Copacapana and setlled into my new room. I got put in a 12 bed dorm, with 11 guys and me. You can only imagine the smell in there, especially with the heat. So. Disgusting. We all hung out down at the hostel bar for a few drinks before taking a taxi out to Lapa - a huge party town in Rio. They close the main road in Lapa and you can roam the streets drinking anything you want from the copious amounts of alcohol from the street vendors that sell any drink you want. We went to a samba club with live music and danced all night, it was so much fun!