rain, rain go away. come again another day (preferably next april!)

So it's day two and I woke up at about four in the morning to the sound of serious torential rain. Hurray. We knew it was coming cause we had tried to book a tour of Rio but the company cancelled cause they knew the rain was coming. And sadly, the Christ the Redeemer statue closes when its raining. I think it has something to do with the fact that its covered in scafolding at the moment and is dangerous when it rains or might have to do with the heavy rain that Rio saw last month. Oh well. We're still going to try get out and do some sight seeing today with our rain jackets. Woo hoo :-)

Yesterday we had a lovely day. Roasting with a slight breeze. And even though every one keeps talking about the humidity I'm not feeling it so that's great. As it was our first day we took things really slowly. Had breakfast in the hostel at about half eight and just hung around the area of Botafogo where the hostel is. Just strolled around. There are VW camper vans everywhere. Brian is very excited :-)

After lunch (fresh bread and fruit from the local supermarket) we headed for Copacobana beach. It was packed. But was hard to find the tourists - well hard to find people as pale, pale white as me. Every one is tanned! Every few seconds we had people up to us asking if we wanted to buy stuff, towels, flags, perfume, teddys, jewellery, peanuts etc. Sat at one of the little huts by the prominade and decided to sample some of the local drinks - Caipirinha (Cachaça, limes and ice) for me and coconut water with rum served in its original packaging for Brian. Just did more strolling around.

Got the metro back to Botafogo, got a bit lost for a while, found Botafogo beach, got a bit lost again, asked a very old Brazilian man for directions but he had no english so we just smiled and nodded. Found our way back eventually and did a bit more relaxing for the night.

So think we are off to see the Sugar Loaf mounatin today... it's the one in the background in this photo taken on Botagofo beach. Even though it's raining and overcast, fingers crossed we'll get a few photo opportunities.