Hi All! Here goes it with first blog entry of the trip! Well it's day two of our nine month plan, and so far so good! It has been amazing to say the least!

After a mammoth flight from heathrow to Rio, we finally got to our hostel at around 11pm local time, which to me and sooz felt more like 3am!We stumbled into our dorm where we found two sleeping german girls - very strange just being able to walk into a room of sleeping people, however it's something im sure will become very normal!No amount of trying to be quiet as we unpacked our pj's and sleeping bags could muffle our rustling and banging around - needless to say we didnt exactly get off to the best start with our new roomies!

So I had my first night kip in the top of a bunk with the angry german beneath and all was fine, a bit nippy in the night so i was glad to have my sleeping bag!

The next morning i got up and showered before brekki - all included in our hostel which was very nice! then went on this organised trip from the hostel. It was absolutley great, a local guy did the tour which meant we could ask questions and learn alot about everywhere we were going, first stop was a national park - if only i ould rememeber the name!We were taken up to this amazing view point which looked out over ipanema and leblon beaches. I think they were trying to sell us paragliding trips, i really want to do it but its costs about 70quids :o/ tricky decision really, i thin it would be worth it but need enough for 9months!! we then went to a waterfall where we saw tiny monkies up in the trees, that made my day, then we went up to see christ redeemer which was gorgeous as it was a lovely hot day! This is when the amazing bit happened, we had been following the olympics results on the local radio wiht our guide translating, and we were actually up at the top of christ redeemer when the news came in the rio had won the olympics!It was so overwhelming all the locals were cheering and jumping around it was such an immense experience to be part of!

Following our sight seeing at Christ redeemer our trip took us to Santa Teresa, a cute little village place for lunch, where we had rice, black beans, salad and fried manioc ( a local veg they fry - a bit like potato). It was good foodat a goodprice! The trip then headed for lapa steps. I absolutley loved this bit, some crazy artist called se la ron, who was blatently an eccentric has made it his life work, a kind of work in progress to tile these steps going up through the town with allsorts of tiles from allover the world. As we were looking at them the artist actually walked up the steps towards us and greeted our guide!Really cool to meet him, the steps ahve been used as back drops for photo shoots and films, really cool place. He had magazine pagesof allsorts of celebs visiting the steps. Anyway I bought a postcard thing andgot it signed and had a photo with him,before stealing a bit of tile which had been removed to put new ones in!Maybe it will be worth a fortune one day hey!

Fromhere we drovvepast the copacabana beach where the stage for the celebrations was and the party was getting underway, shame we couldnt join in,but we had the rest of our tour to do! We decided to add on to the end of the trip sugarloaf mountain. This is a set of two mountains, ofwhichthe largest i assume, lookslike a sugar loaf - what ever that may be! We got two cable cars up to the top, where we had the most awesome sight i think iv ever seen, christ redeeemer wasacrossthe other side of rio,with the sun setting behind! Heres the catch,my camera battery died after getting over excited about monkies so we had no camera between us,as sooz hadnt brought hers! A massive mistake! Anyway a guy we wereon the trip with from our hostel let me take some and took som eof us and agreed to share them -however he found the love of his life one of the following days so we didnt see him again, devastating, we really need to find him -shaun a soliciter from london anybody???! Anyway we stayed and watched the sunset,and saw the city lights turn on as dark drew in,an absolutley amazing experience! That evening we had a few drinks in the hostel thenwent for dinnner down the street at about 12.30 am, man i was starvin! We spent most of the evening with two aussie guys from our hostel, Andrew and Anthony, man they were sofunny,like a comedy act,they cracked me up big time so were good fun to be around. The four of us and a dutch girl went to lapa,as it is supposed to be ´the place to go´ for dancing inthe street, but we only arrived at about 1and where the taxi left us was pretty dead, a few expensive bars but nothing much to speak of,we only stayed for one then came home. Not the crazy samba party we had expected but never mind i think we were all nackered from our flights over still anyway. Off to bed on my top bunk!