Full Circle To Rio

So after travelling around seven South American countries over the last 40 days, today we flew back to Rio for the carnival. The original plan was to go home after the cruise. Then the idea of staying in South America until the carnival, started to take shape. What started as a two week cruise would turn into a 10 week trip, what with our time in South Africa as well.

Montevideo is the most expensive place we have been to on this trip, especially for food and drink, our main expenditure! Though the naval museum was only a pound to get into so there are some swings to the roundabouts. However, I really enjoyed our time here, where we stayed felt safe, we were close to the beach for walks and runs, lots of bars and restaurants and the taxi drivers are very chatty if they hear you can speak a couple of words in Spanish, that was hard work.

At the airport in Rio we were diverted into the priority lane for immigration, we certainly didn't complain but maybe this trip has aged us more than we thought. The whole of the one hour taxi ride to the hotel was through rough looking areas, however as we pulled up at the hotel, in the dark, we were still in a well rough looking area. Hopefully it will look better in the morning.

We then jumped straight into another taxi to go and collect our carnival tickets from a hotel in Copacabana. Where we took the opportunity to meet up with a Brazilian guy who we met on the Camino last October. He works for a different events company doing carnival related tickets and trips, so we were able to get plenty of tips from him for our stay.Read more