Arriving in Rio we were both a bit nervous (we've heard so many bad reports), the bus station was rammed with people, lots of people hanging around doing nothing - so we grabbed our bags, jumped in a cab and got out at the door of our hostel in Santa Teresa.
Hurrah! Our Hostel (Trip Hostel) is amazing - set up on a hill overlooking the city, its clean, modern and just basically lush! ha! Santa Teresa is a cute little suburb, very bohemian with cobbled streets and art (or graffiti, which ever way you want to look at it) on all the walls! My kind of place!
The first day we spent making our way up to the man himself, Christ the Redeemer on the top of Mt. Corcovado. Obviously, being travellers and all, we caught the bus to the 'station' to catch the train...unfortunately for us when we got there we were kindly advised that the station was no longer operating and that we'd have to climb UP the train tracks to the next station...it was about a mile away, very hot, we had to dodge trains and climb over scary wooden bridge things! I wasn't very happy! We did finally reach the station though and get to the top...views of Rio were incredible (if a little hazy) and the geezer Christo wasn't as big as I was expecting...pretty cool though, and there's a little church in him (hmmmmmm!).
From Christo we caught the train down to Copacabana Beach to find a massive Gay Parade (Homofobia something or other, I think its supposed to be ironic, not sure!). Needless to say, it was very colourful - both the people and the decorations. James even got chatted up...by a gay man's friend...naturally! haha! Its those vests! Nezt we headed over to Ipanema Beach for some inline skate dodging and corn on the cob!
Today has been fairly chilled, wandering around Santa Teresa and Centro. We caught the bonde (tram) along the arches at Lapa back up to ST, with James standing precariously on the edge and me sitting happily amongst way too many people - of course the bell didn't work and we wizzed straight past our hostel and ended up walking the same distance back - oh well, it only cost 10p!!
And thats Rio in a nutshell...off to Sao Paulo tomorrow, supposed to be dicey, so should be interesting!!
