New Year - Rio de Janeiro

Our travel to Rio all went very smoothly, getting to our Hostel about 3pm. I saw my first glimpse of Copacobana beach, only 4 blocks away from where we were staying!! Wandered around the city and managed to find the Churrascaria restaurant Chris had been going on about from when he was here last time!! Had a bloody good feed; consists of an all you can eat buffet plus the services of tonnes of waiters coming to your table with big skewers of meat from which they carve straight onto your plate!! Its a carnevors delight!! Had drinks after in the Hostel bar, met up with our fellow companions for the New Year!

The next day (after we both suffered terrible nights with our guts – its been at least 2 weeks now of reoccuring diarhoea, the joys of travelling through Bolivia!), we woke to rain!!! I was still trying to track down the Christmas present my Mum had sent so we caught Metro into Rio Center to find the main Post Office...no luck there either, but we did get extremely wet!! The rain didn’t let off, so the rest of day was spent watching dvd in Hostel and a few drinks later on. By the next day things had gone from bad to worse in my gut situation so I spent all day in bed while Chris headed to beach with the two Kiwi guys in our Hostel. Considering we were paying $50 each a night things weren’t going so well for our New Year celebrations!

Having done none of the touristy things planned, the follwing day (30th) we bit the bullet and joined the 1 hour queue to go up Sugar Loaf Mountain. The view was good, but the photos ruined by the cloud!!! This is Rio’s Summer....where the hell is the Sunshine!!! The weather improved in the afternoon so we headed to the beaches (Copacobana & Impanema), followed by more dirnks in the Hostel that night and a few on the seafront.

31st Dec...New Years Eve....what a dissappointment, RAIN!!! All day!!! With nowt esle to do we started drinking in Hostel early afternoon, kicking off the New Year celebrations. Everyone else soon joined in and combined with tablefootball, cards & drinking games we managed to entertain ourselves pretty well till late evening!!! Most people fucked off to Copacobana beach early (9pm) but seeing as it was still raining, us and Kiwis hung back at the Hostel till 11pm. We made it down to see the fireworks...all 20mins of them!!! But the crowds were massive so could not be bothered fighting them to get round to Ipaneama to see the Black Eyed Peas, so after a couple of hours sat on the beach drinking the free champagne given by the Hostel we headed to bed 2pm! Not the most exciting New Year ever, but definitely a different experience!