I am so happy. I cannot count the number of times I have whispered this to Joel in our first few days in Rio de Janeiro. So far, every moment in this city blows my mind – it’s Jurassic Park-like environment; it’s pulsing beach micro-culture; people dancing samba in the streets; all the exotic but delicious food. As I write this in our hostel courtyard, slurping down fresh paw paw, there’s a local playing a sitar in the apartment next door and a frizzy-haired woman speaking French two tables down. Joel’s just finished his second helping of breakfast (encouraged by me, because it’s free, of course) and we’re about to catch a local bus to the bohemian streets of Santa Teresa. Waking up to a day of the unfamiliar and the unknown – good or bad – makes me feel so alive.

The week before we left passed by in a whirlwind of goodbyes and last minute prep. While the actual farewells were hard, the leaving New Zealand part was not. I was eager for our adventure to begin.

What we were actually doing didn’t sink in till we were winging our way over the islands off Rio in the final few minutes of our flight. The setting sun cast a golden hue over the emerald-green dots, and it finally hit me. This was the beginning – and we were far from home.

So far, we’ve sunbathed on Ipanema Beach with the beautiful people, girls in g-string bikinis and the guys in budgie smugglers, both of our mouths agape. Rio’s cariocas are brilliantly eye-catching; their self-assured swaggers and quick-fire Portuguese adding to their attractiveness. Here, I can’t get mad at Joel for checking out girls, because many of the men are just as beautiful and I don’t want to be a hypocrite!

I’ve been drinking the famous Brazilian drink – the caipirinha – every night so far. I wondered why they were affecting me so much, until Joel watched the bartender actually make it last night.

“Alli,” he said. “You do realise that’s pretty much just four shots of vodka with some lime, eh?”

I had no idea. The caipirinha is made my squeezing limes & their juice into a glass, adding two teaspoons of sugar, then filling the glass with vodka. At $4 NZ per glass, I’m a cheap drunk in Brazil!

In search of jandals for Joel, we stumbled across Havaiana Heaven. A whole shop dedicated to the most colourful, unique pairs of jandals I have ever seen. And, get this – they even had them in my size. We toyed with the idea of opening a shop of this kind in Auckland – it would go off in Mission Bay – before buying a pair each for $10.

In our new jandals we made our way to Escadaria Selaron, Rio’s stairway to heaven and a riot of colour and culture. Chilean-born artist Jorge Selaron spent 22 years covering a huge stairwell with bright coloured mosaic tiles. A dedication to the Brazilian people, the steps are home to tiles from all different countries – including New Zealand! We loved the Maori hook tile and the Bob-Marley lookalikes that sat around singing reggae songs and smoking you-know-what.

Yesterday we saw Christ the Redeemer up-close. Atop the highest peak of the national park that sits in the middle of the city, we could see everything. The sweeping beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema were spread out before us as well as those famous confections of a mountain and the lagoon, the soccer stadium and the botanic gardens. The city seems to have grown up and around the landscape; the beaches, the mountains and the harbour balances the urban with the natural in the most beautiful way possible.

Later we caught the cable car to the Sugarloaf Mountains to watch the sunset. Christ the Redeemer lights up at night, cradling the city in his embrace. Gazing at the lights of the Cidade Maravilhosa (Portuguese for Marvellous City), the joie de vivre of this place began to sink in, and the weight of the last six months of saving, planning and stressing began to lift from my shoulders. We were here, finally – and this was now our life.