Carnival! - A Week in Rio

At the end of a brilliant but exhausting adventure, we've given ourselves a week in Rio to relax: idiots!

First, the Carnival!

We have a great seat to watch the carnival processions from the competing samba schools but nothing, that's NOTHING can prepare us for this. The processions start at 9.30 pm and we tough it out until the last procession at 6am... all the while watching unbelievable costumes, floats and a seething mass of participants, all to a pounding, incessant samba beat. The pics just can't convey this experience but here goes...

And a short video might help..
Movie Clip from our stand

Before the carnival, we arrange a personal tour of a favela despite the tour advice being NOT to...
...we get a lift on motorbikes to the highest favela and really begin to see how these basic communities work. Our guide is keen to publicise the project to provide work and bring investment; she enthuses about a previous visit by Charles and Camilla and the classroom that his charity provided.

We also make a fascinating visit to Selarón's Steps, the never-ending life work of the Chilean artist Jorge Selarón:
Info Here

And, of course, we visit the usual sites:

Recognise this?

Rio from Sugar Loaf mountain

Sugar Loaf Mountain from the cable car

And the last thing to be done is to spend a couple of days relaxing (at last!) on Copacabana beach... We get a free upgrade to a hotel right on the beach with free sun loungers on the beach... and we really make use of these at the end of a wonderful but exhausting tour.

Well, when I say relax..
Copacabana Beach Fun

Falling for Iguazú

One of those heart stopping moments again..

We spend two nights here in the Argentinian town of Iguazú to see the falls from the Brazilian and Argentinian sides. Our first view is from Brazil and it's breath-taking. We've seen some fantastic falls in Zimbabwe and Iceland but these are something else! The sheer volume of water, the noise, the drop... We really do have to catch our breath on seeing this.

While the best view is from Brazil, the Argentinian side, for us, was the biggest thrill. The walkways are quite something... we were able to walk right to the edge of some of the falls, obviously getting drenched at times. To put this in perspective, we walked well over a kilometre across the Iguazú river on the walkway before we actually reached the falls themselves; it was slightly disconcerting to pass parts of the walkway that had collapsed in a flood last year. All seemed well constructed and organised though.

Life on the edge...
Iguazú Falls from the Top