Day 19 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

HER NAME WAS LOLA

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!!!!!

Number of Itinerary items successfully completed: 4

Our first stop on the Grand Rio Tour was St Theresa and the unmissable little train journey. We navigated the very jolty metro and squeezed onto the tram. We think if you hung off the side you got to ride for free but what with all the sheer drops and crazy Brazialian bus drivers we weren´t feeling too confident.

We strolled and took in the view and had a beverage at Mike´s Hauss and then decided to head back down the mountain when we reached the edge of the favella. Then to the shopping centre so Amy and I could start our Grand Tour of the Food Court and then we headed to the Sugarloaf. It´s a good job we ordered a large cloud positioned right on top of the mount because that is what we got. The views, when the clouds parted for seconds at a time, were tremendous....our Look Before You Click philosophy had to be set aside for the sake of Flickr!

It was all very eerie which fitted in nicely with it being halloween.

That night we headed off to the Macarena (Maracena) stadium, the largest in the world don´t you know and watched our home team (The Flamengos/O Meu Mengos) vs the Sao Paulo Corinthians . The traffic was intense, sit down, stand up, the atmosphere was incredible, sit down, stand up, and despite the supporters throwing bottles at each other´s heads for seemingly no good reason, sit down, stand up, it was all very well spirited. Sit Down. Stand Up. We also were lucky enough to be sitting behind a man with the hairiest back you have ever seen. Our guide came to collect us a couple of minutes before the end of the match which we were all very surprised about until the stampede of 100,000 came pounding past us. It was drive-by jump in the van and away we went.

Since we are obviously still made of money we walked past all the plastic-pre-school-tabled-bars on the street and headed for the one with valet parking! You get a ticket, the waiter marks on it what you have, you get your drink, you give the waiter your ticket, you give the waiter some money, he decides whether or not you deserve change and how much, he gives you back the ticket, you give the ticket to the door-person to get out. A bit of a roundabout way of serving people to say the least with the added bonus of (men) being groped by transvestites when you go to the bathroom.