After I finished my tour I said my goodbyes which were sad and headed to the airport to fly to Rio for carnival. The flight was terrible because I had to wait 7 and a half hours in Santiago, Chile before getting my connecting flight. I stayed at a hostel called Walk on the Beach in Rio and the atmosphere was great. As soon as I arrived I was told that I had to come out to a bar which I thought would be fairly quite but I should have realised that nothing is quite during carnival! Out of 6 nights i got to bed before 6:30am once so I´m exausted! There were lots of blocos (street partys) going on at all hours of the day which were really fun, they usualy have an organised start time then people start playing drums and singing. There are usually a couple of hundred people at minimum and a few thousand at maximum and they all parade through the streets causing havoc with the traffic till they stop in a square or at the beach and the party just keeps going till most people have had enough. I went and watched a soccer match on wednesday in the stadium which is the biggest in the world and seats 110 000 people which was great fun. It was a grudge match between two traditional rivals so the energy was amazing. On thursday I went and saw christ the redemer (the huge statue of jesus on the hill) which was impressive but maybe a bit boring cause it is ages away and there is nothing else to do there. I went to the samba drome on sunday to watch the main parade of carnival where the different samba schools get an hour and a bit to dance and parade with a float like in mardi gras. It was very impressive and the costumes were amazing! It is hard to describe it all so i´ll wack up some photos when i get to a better internet conection. I´m about to catch a bus down to Florianopolis which is 18 hours south of Rio to chill out for a week or so on the beach. One of the guys from my hostel lives down there and it sounds great.
