Rio Internacional Rio de Janeiro

... to these tactics and headed in to a local bar which was full of hip hop tunes and thongs hanging from the ceiling...not much more can be recalled from the night except some top drawer spanish bartering from Egan for a cheap taxi back to the hostel.<br><br>We got up very early the next morning in order to try and book the bus to Florianopolis and try and book on to the 930 am tour of the Fervella (these are the huge slums which domineer some of the City's ...

... built on the sides of the rocky Brazilian mountains that surround Rio city so collapses are common. It isn't however, easy for the government to regulate either the growth, or the building standards of these favelas as each are "protected" by the local drug lord and any police entering the area are shot. The locals don't oppose this as they don't pay any building taxes or local government taxes and the drug lords are ...

... little disappointed with it. I enjoyed it though - Sambodromo not really my thing but I loved the dancing around in the Bloco´s. The locals seem to have incredible amounts of energy and can dance for hours on end. There is a buzz about the place and that´s what makes it so special and internationally famous. As for the scantily clad Rio babes, I canconfirm they don´t really exist beyond a handful in the Sambodromo. Actually Rio is not really fullof beautiful people at ...

... dance the night away from the stands in awe at what passes in front... We managed to see the last nights parade and it was just incredible. From 10pm to 5am, different parade floats kept coming past each containing hundreds of people adorned in the most fabulous outfits - feathers and high heels GALORE! The floats themselves were pieces of art each displaying a different theme....a huge Taj Mahal accompanied by mechanical (but very real looking) elephants ...

... round of drinks we headed up the cable car - there is one landing in the middle and we admired the view from that before heading all the way up to the top. WOW - what a great view. We spent a fair amount of time there - we thought that there would be a bar - but it was more of a snack bar - so we didn't get a table and order drinks - everyone kind of did their own thing - admiring the view and taking photos. In many of the ports that cruise ships call in ...

... we found the Princess people they provided her a form to fill out and told her to contact the purser's desk when we got to the ship.<br><br>A bus took us to the ship and it was nice to be done with planes for a bit. We had a fairly long bus ride to get from airport to ship and I snapped a few pictures along the way. We found our rooms and I think most of us had a short nap ...