RIO DE JANAIRO (BRAZIL)

Our night arrival in the "dangerous" city made us choose a more expensive but fairly safe area to stay. Rio is a very diverse city with rich and poor so close together. Favelas are a no-no to enter and properties are secured by 2 to 3 meters high metal fences.

Our most unplanned adventures trip was a visit to an indoor night market with 2 Germans we met in our hostel. On the way we nearly walked in a favela and got shouted at from crazy women behind a metal gate of an alcoholic institution. Suddenly the gate opened and we run as quick as we could. We passed prostitutes with their pimps and after we finally reached the market, frightened after 2 hours, we got told they just closed. Luckily there were buses going back to the centre and we did not have to go through that torture again.

MADRID

Before we started our South America trip we used the stopover to discover Madrid for a few days. Our trip started pretty awful as Petra wrongly booked our accommodation for a day later. Normally not a major problem but Madrid wasn't under normal circumstances that weekend. To cut the story short, all accommodations were fully booked. We finally found a room at 11pm, thought we had to spend our first night travelling on the street.

Otherwise Madrid was o.k. We went to an awful bull fight and left after the first bull was brutally killed. Other memories we kept were Phil's visit to his first sex shop and the many peeping Toms we saw everywhere in the park.

We left Madrid after 6 days and headed to our next destination: RIO DE JANAIRO.