We hadn't booked anywhere to stay, but didn't see that to be too much of a problem. After calling and emailing a few places, we soon discovered that everything was booked as it was the week approaching Easter, which is a big holiday in Brazil. After another hour or so of looking, it got to the point that we had called every hostel in 2 lonely planets, had looked on hostelbookers.com and there was nothing but slim pickings. The search had eaten up alot of our morning and we had really annoyingly missed the boat transfer that we wanted to get to the other side of the island.
Having not booked any hostel at all throughout the whole time I have been away, I was sure that once we actually got to Rio, we could sort something in Ipanema, which is where we wanted to be - right by the beach. But it was a risk, especially as it was a Saturday night. Taking all of that into consideration, we decided to leave the island a little earlier than planned on the 1pm hostel transfer which would get us there by around 4pm.
We had about an hour before we left, so we popped next door through the postcard window to the little beach, sat relaxed and had a drink.
To get back to the main land, it was an hour or so boat ride, but this time it was a proper boat (like what we had caught to Lopes Mendes) rather than a ferry. It was a really nice day and the sun was shining, so we took advantage and sat at the front of the boat. Poor Anna still wasn't feeling too well so took the opportunity to have a little nap in the sun!
The boat took us a different route to the ferry though, which was really nice as we got to see even more of the surroundings across the tropical water.
From the boat we took a 2 hour minibus which took us directly to Ipanema to begin our search. Anna and I headed out to the main few roads where the hostels were based and found somewhere right in the centre of things that we could stay for at least a few nights. It was perfect and the lady who ran it was really sweet (although very scatty and highly disorganised)!
Panic over, we settled in and got glammed up for a night out in Rio!
xxx
