Brasil 2

Ipanema Beach 

The 3 days in Rio were great, but way too short. I spent most of my time (both days and nights) at Ipanema beach, at 35-40ºC the only reasonable thing to do. Unlike Copacabana, the beach of Ipanema is really safe even at night, and after midnight temperatures drop to 25-30ºC which makes it really plesant to sit there and have a beer or in my case some Pisco. In the hostel I met Carlos and Macarena from Santiago de Chile, who brought a few bottles of this brandy-like Chilenean national drink. This caused some heated discussions with Martín from Lima, who claimed that the only original Pisco is the Peruvian one...obviously the import of Chilenean Pisco to Peru is forbidden (and vice versa)...
I met some more people with the same ATM problem, which made me confident that my debit card was ok.

Laguna and the top of the sugar loaf mountain seen from Rocinha 

Rocinha

On my third day I decided to do Marcelo Armstrong's Favela tour. In the early 90ies Marcelo was the first one to offer tours through some of the almost 1000 favelas, with the goal to show people that favelas are more than drugs and crime. We visited Rocinha and Vila Canoas in the south of Rio, close to Ipanema and Copacabana with magnificent views on the laguna and the sugar loaf mountain...
Rocinha is the largest of Rio's favelas and, according to the tour guides, very safe as long as you don't take pictures of the people. They might work for the drug mafia and in this case they would not be very amused to be photographed.
Vila Canoa is one of the richer favelas. Due to a government program, which started in 2005, most of the kids can go to school, all houses have electricity and TV and the unemployment rate is around 10%.

TV and electricity supply for Rocinha 

Alltogether it was a great tour, very interesting and informative...I can only recommend this tour to everyone who is coming to Rio...and the best: two third of the 75 Reals you pay go directly to school projects for favela kids