Worst... flight... ever!

After a brief but enjoyable pitstop in London, we bid farewell to Europe and boarded our plane bound for Brazil - coincidently on the same route as the Air France flight that crashed earlier in the year. About halfway throug the flight we were convinced that we were about to follow their fate - after some ongoing turbulance, the plane hit an air pocket and all hell broke loose. Food trays went flying, glasses smashed and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. Thankfully we recovered from that, but shortly before we were due to land in Rio de Janeiro (and after making several in-air circles), the pilot announced that we'd be diverting to Sao Paulo due to bad weather. So the plane sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours, finally getting the all-clear and landing in Rio at about 2am. An hour of customs and immigration queueing followed, and to top it all off, we discovered that two of our credit cards had been blocked. In the end our 9:30pm arrival time had stretched out to see us stagger into the hostel at around 4am, what a nightmare...

However, despite all the night's misgivings, Rio is a beautiful city. The beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana stretch long and golden, a shimmering front to the staggering green hills that envelop a contrasting mix of glossy high-rise suburbs and favela slums. At every corner there's a hole-in-the-wall snack bar selling about 100 different sucos - freshly squeezed juices of tropical fruits - to go with tasty deep-fried pastries and fresh burgers. Restaurants offer churrasco - tender delicious meat roasted over coals and sliced directly onto your plate - and pay-by-weight buffets of some of the best food you'll ever eat, including the former slave dish of feijoada.

It was rainy and overcast while we were in Rio, making lying on the beach somewhat less appealing, so we headed up on the little train to check out the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking the city. Unfortunately given the cloudy conditions the view over the city wasn't the greatest, and about an hour after we got there the whole statue was engulfed in mist.

A couple of days in a city that has a reputation for violent crime and muggings was more than enough for us (even though we had no problems, we later heard that there'd been a gang war with the police, and a police helicopter was shot down!), so we've headed south for some beach and rainforest action - more on that in our next post.