Partial Brazlian

One of the wonders of the technological age, is that I can sit in a hotel room in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and type a blog update, using my little dongle thingy and baby laptop. Who would've thought? I'm old enough to remember that the phone was a new-fangled device!
So.....I feel like I've travelled half -way around the world and landed in a different time zone, which is equivalent to being hit by a bus, I suspect (having not actually experienced being hit by a bus). This may happen in Rio, Traffic is scary.
Impressions? Big, smelly (sort-of a chemical smell, similar to that that exuded from the area around Rhodes in Sydney when it was an industrial area), contrasting poverty and richness, goats (they'll take over the world), hot, humid.

                                           Beautiful beach, shame about the weather

I have paddled in the Atlantic Ocean!
Copacabana Beach really is beautiful. It's very long, quite wide and clean, though there appears to be an army of people to keep it clean. There's a long promenade all the way along it and lots of running, biking, dog-walking and roller-blading is done.
Locals seem to love their dogs.

                                           See! I really am there.

Have mentioned that you can get caiparinhas about every 50 metres along the beach?