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The return to hostel life is already annoying me as well, people in our room can't sleep with fan on etc plus we seem to have picked an Israeli hostel too. We're in copacobana thou so there's plenty around to entertain our selves with. We spend the majority of day at the beach, getting crashed by waves, this soon becomes the hobby of choice and never seems to get boring getting absolutely smashed and sucked under by these huge waves. The lifeguard however spoils our fun by shouting at us in front of everyone an telling us to get out, jobsworth! In the evening we take the opportunity to jog along the beach not only in a bid to stay fit but also knacker ourselves out and be able to go to sleep earlier. The next day is filled with much of the same and we decide we can't do this for a week so we book a favela tour to go to on the next day. During the evening we go watch a Flamingo game to watch Ronaldinho rip it up. This didn't happen, Flamingo go one up against a s*** side and they just sit back and relax. Ronaldinho didn't even look like he wanted to be there and they win one nil. The highlight was seeing the middle weight UFC champion at half time and getting a picture with him. On the friday we get picked up early and get taken to the favela. The bus drops us all off at the bottom of the favela and we all take motorbike taxis to the top. I'm second to last to go and the tour guide speaks to one taxi driver who for some reason refuses to take me up. He eventually caves in and I get my helmet on and jump on the back. He starts the engine and gives it a rev. Whilst he's doing this I hear the last guy ask why he didn't want to take me to which the tour guide replies "it's his first day"... Brilliant! The motorbikes abit shaky but it gets me there in one piece. He drops me off next to all the others and we wait for the remaining two to get dropped off. We then take a walk into the favelas starting at the top. We arrive at a local artists gallery, have a look around, I can't afford anything although the art is wicked, and then he takes us out to the balcony to look over the favela and talk us through the history. The talk was really interesting, about the gangs, the drugs, the police, the community etc. We then stroll down the to the bottom walking thru the winding ally's stopping at the a few local business' along the way. A few favela kids samba'd for us as well. The whole tour was amazing, really eye opening as well as shocking. Once at the bottom, we got back in the bus and got dropped off at the hostel. It was early evening so once back we had a couple beers decided to head out to impanema. The taxi dropped us off at a gay bar. Its weird how you don't notice it's a gay bar until u get right up to the bar. It's like it takes a minute or so for your brain to change from, there's alot of blokes in here to ABORT! ABORT! GET OUT! We get out and go to a couple bars before heading back to the hostel and going to sleep. Next day is full of wave crashing and jogging but after seeing how the other half lived we wanted to see how they partied so we booked a ticket to the favela party on the Sunday. Saturday night and Sunday we chilled until the party. A group of Argentinian guys checked in and we pre drunk with them until we got picked up by the bus. It was a different favela and this one was far away. It took about an hour and a half before we got there and when we turned up it was already busy. It was basically just a big warehouse. We went in and got ushered to the VIP balcony area with all the other gringos looking down at the party. After about half hour I wanted to go dance in the mix so we headed down. There were some messy looking units down there but absolutely no trouble from what I could see. Some how we ended up dancing next to some brazillians that had there own create and just kept handing us beers. It was awesome. It was so weird that these people that had nothing were so friendly and generous. Around 4am we left the club in the bus and went back to the hostel. Really really good night. Next morning however i had a really really bad hangover. We were planning on leaving for sau paulo that day but that wasn't gonna happen. We didn't tell the hostel we wanted to stay a night but just kept our head down hoping they wouldn't say anything and we'd get a free night. It worked, we went to sleep early and woke next morning with out anyone saying anything. We had a shower, packed our bag and left it near the front door. The two lazy rude layabouts were on shift so when the coast was clear we made a dash out the front door picking out bags up on the way, went to the closest bus stop and caught a bus to sau paulo. The buses ran regularly so we only had to wait half hour before we were boarded and on our way to sau paulo.
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