Fiscal and good Rio info sites...

Fiscal...

If you ever eat out or order from takeaways remember to keep your receipts. Also called cupom fiscal (pronounced like 'fish-kal'), because you'll need to hand them back to them when you pick up your order.

Learned this the 'hard way' when we had some fruit juices at a place in Ipanema. They didn't speak english and we didn't speak much português so it took about 5 mins of repetition and sign language to finally figure out that they needed to keep the receipt you get from the cashier. Got a high five and some street credit for all the trouble. It's a funny process at some places. You order you're food from one counter, pay at another, return to the first one or some other one to collect your food and give them the receipt. They could cut some costs on staff is they just had the whole ordering process streamlined.

I also forgot this last night when I ordered an ice cream yesterday and threw the fiscal in the bin, but luckily it wasn't right on top of the pile on a piece of paper, and there were not hot chicks watching when I made a quick snatch and grab. All for a R$2 ice cream... makes me feel like that hugely obese guy in the movie "Gamer."

More info sites...

I've pasted the links to a couple more websites I feel could be useful to some people. Couchsurfing has a few groups in Rio that could provide some good information for people. I haven't done any couchsurfing yet but would like to try later on when I plan some trips out of Rio, hopefully get interesting experiences out of those (in a good way).

There's also wikitravel, another good travel info source; and a link to a favela tour site that offers accommodation in a favela (Rocinha). I thought this could be interesting for the more adventourous guys. Also I was originally thinking of staying in Rocinha and training there, but the guy that sets up the accommodation etc. got offered a job in UAE.

But everything so far has worked out well. I kind of half (well more like 3/4) planned this trip and the rest I've been winging it. And it's always helpful to know some good sources of information when planning to make a trip whether it's on tight schedule or a spurr of the moment thing.

http://wiki.couchsurfing.com/en/Rio_de_Janeiro

http://wikitravel.org

http://favelatour.org/favela-adventure-programs/cultural-programs/