A quiet morning at the hotel, by the pool.

In the afternoon we took a shuttle bus into one of the shopping malls, then a taxi to Copacabana beach and walked around just soaking up the atmosphere.

All the guide books and advice we have had suggests that Rio is dangerous for tourists. We neither saw nor experienced anything dangerous, but we did see lots of signs of poverty mixed in amongst the wealth of the beach front hotels and restaurants. One million of the six million people in Rio live in shanty towns on the hills sides around the city, and country wide 30% of the population live below the official poverty line.

In the taxi going back to the hotel we saw first hand some of the infamous traffic. Forty five minutes to drive a distance that we could have walked in 30.