And finally we reach Rio; this time (unlike two weeks before) looking forward to seeing what the city had to offer! It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but we did end up warming to it and were so glad that we left our last week in Brazil to experience this great city.

The first day, we arrived at a very central hostel near to Copacabana. Unfortunately, due to the company we used to make this booking (hostelworld.com), our reservation was made incorrectly and we ended up getting something different than expected. To add to our woes, the phone number for the hostel was incorrect (which was provided by the same company) and meant that we couldn't verify our booking until arrival. This was the first time we used hostelworld to make a booking and their lack of feedback when something goes wrong, isn't exactly wowing us (still no word from them over 2 weeks later). Our advice, if you want to make a booking using the web, is to go directly to the hostel itself since this added middleman automatically takes a 10% cut of the total (which you will never see again should anything go wrong). Over the last couple of months we've been able to get the best rates by just calling up a place or walking in and talking directly to them.

Some good did come of this mixup however, as we landed a gem of a place from our subsequent search for what we WERE looking for. Called "Baron Garden", we found this on the Net but this time, learning from our mistake, we booked with a quick painless phonecall. This Pousada is in a huge colonial house and was opened to the public last Febuary during Carnival. It's so new that it's only had a handful of guests which is apparent in the nice relaxed way it's run. The truth is that we felt like we were at home; we put on a couple of washes, cooked dinner in the massive well equiped kitchen (ok so that's a little better than home)... it was excellent!

During our stay here we met a sound couple of fellow travellers, Louise and Masood, which we clicked with from the word "Go". This definately made the stay all the more memorable.

Around the city the places we enjoyed most were: Christ the Redeemer, with it's panoromic view of the city; the Maracana stadium with it football heroes such as Pele, Ronaldo, Romario; and the tour of the favelas.

In short, favelas are basically poor areas where housing has developed without any planning or adherence to building regulations (and are sometimes described as slums). A good example can be seen in the film "City of Gods", which is based on the true story of a favela called "Cidade de Deus" (which is located out by Rio's international airport, although now divided by a major road). These are run by drug barons and (paradoxially) are some of the safest areas in Rio, as crime is not tolerated by the ruling gangs because it gives the police a reason to interfere. It's estimated that up to 20% of Cariocas (people from Rio) live in favelas so this is real life for a huge amount of people and often goes ignored.

To see the favelas, a tour is essential since there can sometimes be powerstuggles between rival gangs. The company we took the tour with (www.favelatour.com.br) have been going for 12 years and were extremely knowledgeable, being able to answer any questions we were able to fire at them. Also importantly, they are not running the tour to exploit the favelas but rather to inform people about them and 40% of the ticket price goes directly into community projects in these areas.

Of the small group on our tour, there were two Irish girls and a Catalan girl. We ended up dragging these, plus the couple from our guest house, out to see Rio's nightlife later that day. We all had an unforgettable night experiencing Samba and sampling the local poison "Caiprinha". These were our last few hours in the city and we finished up on a high note.

Shame about the knock back to reality in the morning as we scrambled to catch our flight to Peru.