So, we finally made it safely to Rio...and it was raining! Not what you expect from South America but it is the end of their winter so we´ll let them off.
The flight over was OK - all on time and arrived slightly early. Our lift wasn´t at the airport when we arrived but we managed to negotiate buying phone cards and using the phone to call the hostel...so far, so good.
The hostel´s nice and the people are very friendly. We spent the morning this morning with Natalie, a French girl, and Chris, a German guy, who showed us how to use the buses so we´re pros now! Natalie was also very helpful as she´s going to study in the north of Brazil for a semester and speaks good Portugese. We managed to work out that a lady on the bus was asking us if we wanted to see Sugarloaf Mountain as it was the bus stop for there so we were quite chuffed about that.
Our hostel is just at the bottom of Sugarloaf on the Guanabarda (not sure of spelling!) bay side, in a district called Urca. We´ve got a sea view if you look really closely! It´s actually quite nice because Urca seems to be mainly a residential area and apart from the people staying at our hostel, we haven´t really come across a lot of other tourists.
First impressions of Rio? Slightly mixed really. Bearing in mind that we´ve been a bit dazed all day following our flight, I´m not sure either of us really knew what to expect. I guess the typical postcard view of Rio is Copacabana beach, where we haven´t been yet...although Chris is keen to check that one out!
We made a trip into the ´Centro´ district this morning. It seems to be an area of contradictions. On the one hand, there are some really beautiful old colonial style buildings, but on the other there are ugly tower blocks. Rich and poor are all evident in a relatively small space as well. Driving from the airport this morning, we passed several ´favelas´. The organised tour around these is supposed to be very interesting but we´re not sure whether budgets will stretch to it at the moment.
Overall, we´ve had a good day, although it still doesn´t all seem quite real at the moment. It still feels a bit like a short holiday. We´re sure the realisation will hit us in a couple of weeks time.
Not sure what´s on the agenda next but there´s so much to do and see in and around Rio that it´s going to be a case of deciding what to leave out. We have heard that there may be a football match on at the Maracana tomorrow afternoon so will go along to that if we can. We´ll keep you posted.
So now it´s bye bye from me and it´s bye bye from him.
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