RIO and the CARNIVAL!!!!

Arrived at 10 at night after a gruelling 12 hour flight, and all we had to do was meet the driver from the hostel. Sounds simple doesn´t it.... After waiting 30 mins there was still no sign of him... and being the trusting people that we are we had not taken the address of the hostel where we were staying. So after a lot of guesturing and general i don´t speak Portuguese / I don´t speak English type of conversations we managed to find out where the internet cafe was to download the address. After finding the cafe we were a little downheartened to find that it had closed 5 mins ago. ( i cried - arlene ) So armed with nothing but our wits and sad pleading faces we went back to the arrival hall.

Then the hero of the day came... a pickup driver for another place used his phone to call his mates to google the address for us, Yey!!! and we were soon in a taxi to Flavallenia Pousada.

The hostel is in one of the Flavella´s where the poorest people live. There are only a few TV´s and not really much else, but everyone seems unbelieveably happy all the time. The kids entertain themselves, with what little they have ( so adorable) playing on an old bath or throwing stones. The only down side is the 1000 steps which we have to climb to get back to the digs...(i think its more like 250000000000) wait till you see the video.

Day 1 - Woke up early due to a F**King cockerel, which stays in the house below us. But this wasn´t all bad as we had much to do. Left the flavella to go and collect the tickets to the CARNIVAL!!! armed with a map and not much else we were soon given strange looks at our attempts to get a bus to take us near a metro. 2 buses and 2 kind english speaking people later and we were walking along the white sands of the Copacabana, as the sun shone down and the waves lapped our feet. ( my best bit yet )

We were soon heading back with the tickets in hand, so after a couple of hours sleep we were heading down to St. Theresa for a street party. Never seen anything like it in our lives... A lot of drinking, dancing on the street, costumes, and singing.... Amazing

CARNIVAL - Totally unbelieveable, arrived at 11pm and stayed till 5 in the morning. 33 degrees at 3 in the morning...and about 50 million people there...( Arlene slightly exagerating i´m guessing 45 lol) Definately something that you should experience once in your life. 6 schools parade down the mile long road dancing the full way, with each school taking 1 1/2 hours to complete the mile, whilest being judged. The floats were incredible ( not quite up to the Gala day´s standards but they were a close 2nd lol)

We are having a little trouble posting all of the pics which we have taken, but will add them once we know how...lol

Love Garry and Arlene

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