Joe & Kel's South America Vacaciones : When my baby smiles at me I go to Rio

We have mixed feelings about Rio.   We were not lucky at all with the weather. Day 1 saw us visit Christ The Redeemer and Sugerloaf Mountain which was covered in fog and pouring rain.   Our tour guide, who by the way has lost count of the number of times he has been there, said it was the worst day he had ever seen. Still, the statue was awe inspiring.

The bad weather continued for the remaining 2 days we were in Rio.   Each morning was covered in heavy fog and you couldn't see a thing.   We did however make sure went down to the copacabana beach for a dip in the ocean.   We pretty much had the entire beach to ourselves!!!

We went across to Ipanema beach on our last evening and loved it. We found it to be a much nicer area than copacobana.

I went on a tour of the largest Favela in Rio where 200,000 people live.   This was an eye opener. You could get lost in the labyrinth of streets in an instant. My guide actually lives in that Favela and told me that the people who live there are happy and would never leave.

We found the city pretty chaotic at times and very very few people understand English. We all think that Rio will struggle with hosting next year's World Cup and Olympics in 2016.

So all in all we are not in any hurry to return to Rio. Plus we had to say goodbye to our first tour group and we miss them already.

Bring on Peru and the last supper of Guinea pig!