Well, by this point we'd been travelling for nearly 11 months and had come to regard ourselves as pretty experienced travellers as we'd managed to get by without any major mishaps - but was it really wise to turn up in one of the world's most dangerous cities without the address of our hostel??? The answer to that we found out was No!
It meant an hour driving around Rio in a cab with a driver who was starting to get pissed off and in the end just pulled over and looked like he was going to cry! Luckily at this point we were only a few doors up from the hostel - someone must have been watching over us :)
We were relieved to eventually check in. But we thought we'd been driving for so long we'd ended up back in Australia!!!! I kid you not! Australia must have been empty as 85% of the folk staying at the hostel were Aussies.
So on that basis we'd say Brazilians are at the top of the partying league, followed closely by the Aussies! Although Brazilians are hard to beat - they can only be described as close to crazy!!! They can party on buses, trains, beaches, and in the street pretty much 24/7 for a week!!!
And the Sambadrome has to be the most colourful party of them all - 2x nights, 12x Samba schools, 100's of dancers, and 1000's of spectators - oh yes, and lots of half naked Brazilian ladies shaking their booty!!!
But with any good party comes a really bad hangover and this is where Rio's darker side comes to the fore. As the week progressed it seemed the locals were starting to loose it a little - feeling rough, getting paranoid, running out of cash and picking fights :( Unfortunately some of the folk at the hostel came out worse because of this as they were robbed - we were really lucky not to be!
And when we took a walking tour through one of the Favelas we realised Rio is one scary place! The poverty there is pretty extreme and the Mafia are the boys in charge - we guessed they were the one's on the motorbikes with the guns!! You're supposed to be okay when on the tour as the Mafia have given their approval, but there's no way you can go into a Favela on your own - there were some really mean looking dudes who looked like they really didn't want ANY Gringos on their patch!
During the tour we were told by our guide that Adriano (famous Brazilian footballer), still has a house in the Favela and parties with the Mafia every Sunday! I suppose it doesn't matter how rich you are - you still want to keep the Mafia on side!
So that was it !!!!! .......the party's OVER!! .... and we were heading home :(
AN AMAZING END TO AN AMAZING YEAR!!!!
(Although, perhaps its not quite the end just yet? We still have a night in the Mal Maison to look forward to for our anniversary on the 21st of March! This will take us full circle back to the start! We'll be thinking about you all and the good times we had when we were there last year :)
p.s. Don't forget we've still got some Aussie photos & 3 months in South America to show you. I'll be posting these in the next couple of weeks - something to keep me amused while I'm getting over being back at work :(
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