Rio, Brazil

A few hours after our ferry dropped us off from Ilha Grande we arrived in Rio.  Since we'd hit quite a bit of traffic and I was leaving in 2 days, I wanted to make the most of my time here, so I got an afternoon city tour.  We visited Christ the Redeemer, drove by the beaches, drove into downtown (old city), drove to where the carnival is held to see all the bleachers, visited the soccer stadium, where they have a museum, and took the gondola up Sugarloaf just in time to see the sunset!

The following day, I took a favela tour, which was AWESOME!  As you can see from the photo below this favela is built on a hill, so first we were dropped off at the bottom of the hill and then took motorbikes up to the top of the hill to start our tour.  You walk all the way down through the "slums" and meet the local people, avoid eye contact & take no photos of the drug dealers, and I thought it was the highlight of my time in Rio.

Here is an example of the art work which comes out of the area:

This is one of the paintings my mate bought since I don't have a photo of mine - amazing huh???

That afternoon, after the favela tour, was the second Brazil match & everything in Brazil was shutting down, so we quickly changed into our green & yellow outfits and walked down to Copacabana beach to watch the match on the jumbo-tron.  Amy & I (as you can see below) got tired of standing up during half time so we decided to relax in the sand, but you can see all the legs surrounding us, cause there were thousands of people there!  Luckily for us, Brazil won again, so the city was happy.

My last day in Rio, I had a taxi coming around 3pm, so I didn't do much of anything, had breakfast, packed my bag, showered before the taxi arrived and hung out with my mate who were lucky enough to be staying a few more day.

At 2pm the taxi arrived, took me to the airport & that evening I flew from Rio to San Paulo, then had a few hours in the airport while I waited for the second half of my flight into New York.