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Happy Hippos on Holiday
Hi everyone!
Good to know you have logged on to see what we're up to!
Anyway, as you will have guessed we arrived safely. The flight was better than expected as we both got a decent amount of sleep - there were no screaming kids to keep us awake on the plane - in fact about 80% of the passengers were 18-35 yr olds heading for Carnaval!
We arrived at our hostel in Ipanema around lunchtime yesterday and spent the afternoon exploring the area (which is absolutely lovely...even for a cityphobe like me - K), including a few hours checking out the beach (perhaps that was why I forgot I was in a huge city - K) and chilled there for a bit (even I was happy to sit still in the sunshine all that time - Z), drank coconut milk straight out of the shell with straws - how cool is that??? and then stopped off for a diet coke at the Girl from Ipanema bar, where the song was written (allegedly!).
Today (Thur) we visited the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio (see postcard) - we turned down the opportunity to be followed by TV cameramen filming tourists during Carnaval, but were not able to say no to the samba group that insisted we got up to dance with them on the train up to the monument! When we got to the top the view was completely hidden by cloud cover, which was disappointing, but within the hour, the clouds cleared and the panoramic vista over Rio was absolutely phenomenal.
We then successfully navigated the bus system and made our way into the city centre to follow a walking tour of the main sites. It was interesting, but after 2 hours of walking the (smelly) city streets in temperatures in excess of 30 degrees, we can BOTH say we prefer the beach!
Carnaval starts for real tomorrow and we have a hectic itinerary chasing the action (the free bits anyway!) around the leafy suburbs.
Hope all is well with you guys. Keep in touch - we love reading all the messages you have left and e-mails you have sent.
Kirstie & Zena
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