million and one head thoughts about how unfortunate it would be for you if you got seriously ill on a plane! Thankfully there were a couple of doctors or medical people who sprang out of their seats to help. It was a really awful 20 minutes or so, the air staff were brilliant though and got all necessary oxygen, first aid equipment and did whatever the medical people told them to do. Thankfully after around 30 minutes the old lady was sitting up and although still looking rather grey looked like she was going to be OK. The cabin crew also looked rather relieved. People near to the old lady offered their seats so she could lie down and after a bit of seat juggling everyone was sitting comfortably and the cabin lights were dimmed yet again. Thankfully the rest of the flight was uneventful which we were extremely relieved about. The old lady was taken off first when we arrived at Sao Paulo and she seemed to be looking a far better colour! We had around an hours wait before our connecting flight to Rio de

Janeiro.

We touched down in Rio and took a pre-paid taxi to our hostel. We were both quite nervous about Rio due to the guidebooks pointing out that it is one of the worlds most dangerous cities! We weren’t going to take any chances, but everyone we’d met so far was extremely helpful and friendly and the airports weren’t half as dodgy as the guidebooks made out. Sometimes guidebooks and the foreign office website are the worst things you can look at before travelling to a country that is an unknown quantity, they really do make you paranoid! I know they have to prepare you, but on more than one occasion we have thought they’ve been a bit Hollywood in terms of being a tad over the top!

We had decided to stay in Santa Teresa, the old part of Rio as neither of us are beach people. I