Day one of ninety three

Happy to let you all know that we've arrived safe and sound - after 17 hours of flying, LOTS of champagne, four awfully exciting SAA meals and 6 inflight movies later.

Mark was happy as a pig in shit to discover that our international flight had tv screens for each seat, so spent the whole trip bouncing between movies, games and music. Justine slept :)
Our stop over in Sao Paulo was awesome. Had to circle the city before landing, so we got a good view from the air. It is HUGE - later read up that it is home to over 17 million people.
We were both exhausted by the time we finally landed in Rio, but were shocked back to life by a kamakazi taxi driver from hell. Actually, everyone here seems to drive like mad men. Makes us SA drivers look like old grannies.

Woke up this morning to a rainy and very wet Rio - actually quite relieved though because it gives us a chance to explore the city, without feeling like we're missing out on quality beach time.
Took a walk through the main streets of Copacabana this am and got a good idea of brazilian life.

Funny sights so far:
- poodles walking around wearing little takkie like shoes on all four of their paws (beware Pig - new fashion statement)
- an identical bov lookalike
- loads of older people with braces (I should have left mine on for the trip)
- bizarre fruity kind of food that we ate at breakfast this morning but still have to figure out what it is (at least we hope it was fruit!)
- toilet stalls where the walls are only chest high, so you've got to peer over the top of the wall to figure out whether there is anyone in the stall. And it feels like everyone else is checking you out while you sit on the loo to poop (talk about performance anxiety)

Very few people here speak English so we're relying on our trusty pocket guide to help us by. At least we have learnt how to say the basics - "where is the toilet?"

Spending the afternoon wandering around a huge local shopping centre - lots of bikini shops - yaaaaa. Hopefully the weather gets better before the carnival party this weekend. We have plans for dinner tonight with some locals (Mauricio and Sandra) who we're hoping will fill us in on all the places to visit.

Time for a bit of lunch, so goodbye for today and love to you all at home.

Thanks Andrew for the comments - but are you spewing out Portugese or Spanish? You've got us very confused because we can't find the comments anywhere in our Portugese dictionary. We'll check out our Spanish one when we get back to the hotel to figure out what you're rambling on about :)