Well, after a crazy fun filled Christmas and New Year we are back on the road again for the final leg of our trip only 36 days left before we’re back home and back to reality. We met Dolly’s mum, Sister and Steve at the airport, who arrived in their specially made “Rick and Dolly T-shirts” to surprise us! Dolly and Angie cooked up one hell of an Xmas feast! We even found sprouts at the supermarket! After lunch we went down to the beach and got the lat few rays of sunshine before heading back for a lazy Xmas night strolling down Copacabana’s promenade.

We got lots of presents from home and lots of Christmas and Engagement cards delivered to us in Rio! thanks so much to everyone! One of the best presents has to be from Steve tho, the little diamond got my a new cowboy hat! ha ha, just like the one I lost in Honduras. He didn’t do too badly either with his Brazilian scalatrix set. Dolly got lots of girly smelly things, which she was pining for! and wedding magazines!

A few days after Christmas Dolly’s friend Nikki arrived for the New Year celebrations, we spent the few days building up by visiting Rio’s famous sights, including Corcavardo, you know, the big Jesus statue thingy! Most people had the same idea that day and it was rammed!! Also we visited the Maracana Stadium, the biggest football stadium in the world, where I found out that I have the same size feet as Pele! (video of brasilian football skills here) On New Years Eve we had another excellent meal! Cooked by Dolly again! she’s clearly been missing cooking the last 7 months! and then we went to join the 2 million strong crowd just outside on Copacabana Beach to watch the fireworks and bring in 2007! Below is a video of New Year in Rio.

We had a brilliant 12 days together and it was a real shame when it was all over! We had heard so many stories about Rio being very dodgy, tourists getting mugged and all that, but we didn’t see or hear about anything while we were there. One really sad ironic story tho, was that while Nikki was with us in Rio her flat in London was broken into and her digital camera and Car stolen! Nightmare, she had left her camera at home because of Rio being dangerous, and only brought a disposable. So just goes to show, it can happen anywhere. Also, while we were in Rio there were some disturbing news reports about violence in the local Favelas (slum neighbourhoods). We were no where near where it was all happening, and also managed to successfully keep the story away from Dolly’s mum for the entire 12 days! You can read it here, scary stuff.

So now were in Ouro Preto, which is a little gold mining town about 400km north west of Rio, we plan to be here a few days and visit the old gold mine and have a look in a few of the jewellery shops for diamond rings! We’ll then be making our way up the North East coast until we jump on a Amazon River boat for 5 days into the heart of the Amazon Jungle. speak soon!

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