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Bom Dia (that´s almost the extent of our Portugese!!),
We are ending our 14 week journey around South America on an absolute high in the marvellous (as the local´s call it) of Rio de Janeiro. We will rave on about it shortly but this is quite a contrast from our arrival to Rio ten days ago; where it was pouring with rain, beaches were deserted and we couldn´t see the tops of the mountains, let alone the statue!!
After that first dreary day, we decided to head to Ilha Grande, a lovely, car free, island 150 km south of Rio. We stayed in a hostel right on the beach where you could hear the water lapping the beach from our bed. We had a very relaxing five days with a couple of days spent on the beach. One such beach was Lopez Mendes, a pleasant reward after a two hour rainforest walk to reach it.
On our return to Rio, we found the weather had changed completely and it has been mid to high 20´s every day allowing us to wear shorts, singlets and thongs (aka flip flops!) and this temp doesn´t really drop much of an evening. The weather to finish our trip has been just what we hoped for when we were freezing at times in Peru and Bolivia!
We had heard many negative comments about safety in Rio, but have found that if you take normal precautions, it has been absolutely fine.
It´s a really exciting city and we have done the following-: plenty of beach time, visited the Christ statue (massive and excellent view of the city), Favela tour (walking tour through a slum area in the city.....incredible insight into the other side of Rio), Street party (brings a whole new meaning to public drinking!), Samba Club (we brought a whole new meaning to this style of dance.......!!), Cable car up to Sugarloaf Mountain during sunset (a different view of this stunning city, which has the largest city based National Park within its boundries and over 515 Favela´s), Samba School (where we saw this years Carnival winners rehearsing for next year) and took in a football match in the famous Maracana atmosphere (never been to a sporting event where you wanted to dance at the same time......the constant drumming, singing, chanting of the supporters was uplifting! The star player (Adriano who has recently returned from playing in Italy.....homesick for the favela where he was from) scored the only goal for the match so it was hometown win.
And so after 30 bus trips (including 12 overnights), 7 boats, 5 planes, 2 jeeps, 1 train and 1 bike, 43 different hostels and 99 days since leaving Scotland on May 4th, we head to the airport in Rio tomorrow night having had an absolutely unforgettable range of experiences, come to realise South America is a massive continent, wished we learnt Spanish and a bit of Portugese but really enjoyed sampling new cultures (reinforced how fortunate we are having seen some extreme poverty), meeting lots of people and making some new friends along the way.
We now look forward to the new Scottish chapter that is about to open for us!
Love Mal and Nat
PS. We have been snapping away with our old style film camera and when we have these developed, we will try to get digital copies. If any of them are ok....we´ll add some to the blog at a later date!
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