Melia Angra Marina Angra Dos Reis

... are trying to avoid the lure of the drug world by making money from their art - which is astounding - and very reasonably priced. I hate not being able to buy this stuff as I´ve to lug it around and it would get ruined - thankfully there is a website I´ll be able to check out when I go home.<br><br>After leaving "1" we come across three guys in their early twenties who laugh, joke and call us amigo (I´m assured we´re prefectly safe). When two ...

... great weather so we went to Copacabana beach for the last time and enjoyed some more strong waves! Sadly we had to cut our fun short as it was time to go to the bus station ready for our 42 hour bus journey to Buenos Aires! <br><br>So all in all, Rio was great! A fantastic city where we met some great people and went to some amazing places! We partied hard for my birthday and it was a great week! Would love to do it all again sometime! <br><br><br><br>

... of man-made creation and of nature, of wealth and poverty - it's such a place of extremes and contradictions that go beyond usual class contradictions of big cities (whether it's seeing a homeless person sleeping across the street from Trump Tower in Manhattan or having L.A.'s Bonaventure hotel for presidents and kings steps from Skid Row). We, of course, got lots of pictures from this vantage point as we squeezed through the throngs of ...

... Flavella and have a caiperina cocktail from a little bar hidden in the maze of narrow alleys. <br><br>We go onto visit another Flavella which received international funding and consequently has an official electricity, water, and sewage supply. This place feels like a basic but nice residential area. We walk through the narrow streets (now officially named and registered) and find a church, houses, and shops. We visit the after school programme ...

... stalls (like cheese on sticks!). And after a lot of wandering (Paula wanted to choose the perfect one) we chose a club and danced the whole night away, with a few more caipirinhas to help through the embarrassment! So, the next few days we´re saying goodbye to Susan and then Jo and us three are heading off to Ilha Grande since Rio is far to expensive for us to spend any significant amount of time!

... never. Before a leave Rio I had to visit the "The Maracana", one of the holy grails of world football. So this evening I went to watch a cup game. The Maracana was build for the 1950 world cup and hosted the final in front of gigantic crowd of 200,000 people, today it's capacity is only a modest 90,000! I went to watch a Taca Rio cup game between Fluminense and Volta Redonda. Just getting to the game was an experience in it's self. I had to catch the metro which was a ...

... v. flamengo at the maracana which was such a good match - bumped into serena from fortnums, very weird. it ended up being a draw even though botafogo was winning up until the 89th minute. monday, wed and thurs was work then home after, not exciting, althoguh on wed there was an australian film crew who wanted to film us painting - we didnt want them there! the main man was a complete dick as well, apparantly hes famous which is probably why. tuesday i met immie and we had a ...

The first stop on our journey from hell from Ihla Grande to Puerto Iguacu!! We got the ferry over to Angra from the island (90 mins) and when we were getting off we met a lovely Australian couple who were to become our travelling companions for the next 48 or so hours - Adam and Alex. We walked, with our backpacks (very proud) from the ferry to the ...

... a taxi to the ferry port with a Brazilian girl who was working on the island. She was singing the praises of the hostel where she worked. Actually we weren´t sure we wanted to stay in a hostel at this point, but it sounded like it was a fabulous location, so we went with it. The hostel Aquario was on the far side of the beach, with a fantastic view of the beach, it´s own jetty and backed by rainforest. Too good ...

... sunbathing. I got the beach taxi back to town early as I wanted to find out about the diving for tomorrow.<br><br><br>2nd March. We set off at 08:30 for 2 dives, the boat took about an hour to the first dive so we (Alan, Tom and me) got chatting to the other 5 people we were to be diving with. One of the girls we met was from Manchester and when we got in the water I tested my buoyancy and needed more weight, so I asked her to pass me down a couple of half kilo ...