Raining in Rio

I have arrived. Well actually I arrived yesterday. My poor sis got up early yesterday morning to drive me to the airport, I also got up early. I was on a plane out of the UK and in Portugal by 8.30am. The airport in Porto is weirdly, big, clean and almost completely empty. Odd. There were only about 20 of us on the plane and I slept pretty much alll of the way.

The next plane however wasn´t really designed for someone with as ample a bottom as I but fortunately no one sat next to me so I could pop the armrest up and have a bit more space. At least until the woman in front of me put her seat back and nearly knocked me out. I moved.

The food was OK, the films were pretty dismal- though I did enjoyment the Brazilian one about a ´hock and holl´ band at high school:) The plane was full of old people which was kind of odd and no less than six people in wheelchairs got on board.

We landed at Rio at 4.30 but it was another 30 minutes before we got off the plane. Then we queued to get down the ramp, and again to have our bags x-rayed and again to go through Immigration. No one questioned my one way ticket, by the way, so I guess that I could have got away with not buying one for Argentina before I went, ah well! And I shot through immigration because I was in the non-Brazilian line.

Then I spent a rather long hour standing at the bag carousel waiting for even a glimpse of my bag. AN HOUR! When it finally crept onto the conveyer belt I felt like a proud mum at her kid´s sports day - ´Look, that one is mine!´- and when I got hold of it I felt like I had won the lottery. Then I joined another queue to get through customs. All in all it was quite a long day of queuing and it took two hours to get from the point when we touched Brazilian soil to me finally making it out of the airport.

Fortunately my driver was still waiting (there is a free airport pick up service from the hostel) and it took us an hour to get through the traffic to Copacabana where I was staying. We chatted away merrily in Spanish though I have a suspicion that it wasn´t all as Spanish as he claimed it to be.

And I slept soon after I had checked in.

Which is why I woke up at 5.30 and was out of the hostel by eight.

If it makes any of you feel any better, I got soaked walking along the beach in the rain an hour or so ago!

So not much to report yet, just thought I´d let you know that I am here:)