I´ll get a job where I want...

And so, I have arrived in Rio, and my adventures have truly begun. The BA flight, though delayed, was greatly aided with an upgrade enabled by my fantastic aunt Sally, meaning the 13 hours on the plane was blissful on my ridiculously long legs. Arriving two hours later than planned, Rio airport at midnight was manic with Taxi drivers, all looking perplexed at the address of my hostel which I offered. It took around 20 drivers to shake their heads (with no response to my cries of "por que não? por que não?!") before one agreed to take me. After some hair raising driving and four stops at gas stations for him to ask directions, we pulled up at an abandoned car garage and the driver proudly claiming we were at the destination. It was not so...

Luckily the erroneous hostel address came with the correct phone number and we were redirected at 1am to the opposite side of town (not without a price), eventually arriving at Samba Villa in Lapa, Rio:


The hostel is just fantastic, and above is the view. It is one of the cheapest in the city, clean, friendly, well situated and seemingly only frequented by Brazilians who are visiting from around the country. The Brazilians speak a lot less English than I speak Portuguese (infinitesimally small - i.e. the most fluent of the 10 inhabitants can proudly count from '1 - 10' and declare that 'the book is on the table'). I clearly had my work cut out for me on the language front...

Despite the language barrier, the few months I have been learning Portuguese before arriving have been invaluable and have found myself chatting with the Brazilian Petrochemical students from Belem (in the north of Brazil) every night, which is great for my learning. There is a lot of pantomime and I will no doubt be a Sharrads world champion upon my return, but, more importantly, my confidence is really growing.

Although there were gloomy forecasts the day before my departure (5 solid days of 'heavy rain'), I have enjoyed three days of blistering sunshine - and I'm not exaggerating. I am literally covered in blisters. After only four hours walking the length of Copacabana (see below) and Ipanema beaches, I discovered these four things:

1. These are clearly some of the most beautiful beaches in the world
2. They are visited by some of the most beautiful people in the world
3. You can make friends with anyone on the beach so long as you can vaguely kick a football
4. If you wait for an hour and a half before putting on suncream, you may well turn bright red (not pink - red) and stay as such for at least three days.


There now exists a rather attractive collection of yellowy blisters on my nose, forehead and shoulders. I quite clearly do not count as one of the beautiful people... No one likes long winter nights and bad weather in the UK, but at least it can't give you melanoma and painfully red skin.

There is an up side to my so-called suffering - my continuing efforts with speaking Portuguese, and talk of needing extra money for my trip have caught the ear of the hostel's bar manager, Ivan, who has just offered me a bar job working at the weekends for a few nights free accommodation during the week. Great success! (with obligatory Borat accent).

I'll most likely catch up with everyone again once I'm more settled and have seen more, but for now,

Boa Tarde,


Dan