Am just back from a Catholic Festival in Minas Gerais, it´s about 70 mins from Joao Pinheiro. The weirdest festival I´ve ever been to. We went on Sat afternoon until Monday evening. It´s a mix of wasted non-believers and wasted belivers. Everyone drinking beer all day long and going to mass! At 5am mass starts and it´s blared out all over the village from loud-speakers! Weirdest thing about it is that there´s NO live music at all. It´s all crappy pop music at horrendous volumes from a million different cars (which subsequently caused lots of battery problems, ha ha). WRECK MY [View Full Entry]

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Hi again, Am desperately trying to update this (as usual) before I forget all the little bits. But d´habbitude am so bored of it that I´ll not bother with all the main bits. oops wasn´t supposed to admit that.. Anyway in Manaus I got on a very different boat to go to Belem. This time instead of having 8 passengers we were between 250 and 300- incredible. Of the 4 nights I slept there I only slept in the same hammock space twice. One of those times I was woken at 4am cos I was sleeping above the cargo hold and [View Full Entry]

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Hi again, Soz have been out of contact for a while- travelblog gets out of hand, I fall behind and then it´s just way too much effort to know where to begin to write... Anyhoo, have now left Justo again- a week and 2 days ago in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia. It was very sad to leave him because we don´t know when we´ll see each other again. I´m going home this day in 7 weeks and he´s in La Paz, going onto Peru and I´m in Brasil again. Missing him, but when we do see each other we fight so we´re probably [View Full Entry]

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Just back a few days ago from lovely Pampa 3 day tour. Will see about putting the photos up now... Um actually I can´t. Bugger and damnation. Will try to from Brasil where computers are faster (I hope). We saw endless numbers of aligators, caimen or is it caimans, qutie a few monkeys- howler, cappuchino, spider, some pink and grey river dolphins, loads of birds- especially enormous egrets, toucans, some dumpy little forest chicken thing, um a 3-toed sloth on the drive back, an anaconda, etc. have to go now, looooo [View Full Entry]

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Back yesterday early evening all sweaty and minging (even more than usual). Had been on a 4 day jungle trip where I was thinking I´d see shitloads of animals. I think the guides were making all the monkey noises we were supposed to hear. Our guide would wait until the cook and the other guy had gone on ahead and then make a monkey call and we´d hear the reply but it sounded so similar that I couldn´t help but have my suspicions. The most exciting thing we saw was an (apparent) footprint of an ocelet or something. I reckon they [View Full Entry]

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And I suppose it's worth it... Got to Machu Picchu about 6am on the outrageously overpriced bus which takes about 20mins from Aguas Calientes and costs a whopping $6US! Got there all excited about the sunrise and found the surly wagon at the ticket desk annoyed with me as I'd not bought my entrance ticket in advance- what a pile of excrement. Anyway so I had to impatiently wait for about 15mins while she sorted out how to do her job and sell me a ticket. But all was not in vain for I'd about 40mins to wait after I'd entered [View Full Entry]

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Saludos a todos, I've now been in Cusco for over a week. I finally met up with Henrique and Leo on Wednesday night after Henrique checked his emails. So that was really nice. He left this morning to fly to Lima and then flies home to Brasil tomorrow, so am on my own again. This week in Cusco has been quite exciting. Lots of street parties and dancing and drunkenness, leading up to 24th, Inti Raymi, the winter solstice- when we watched a theatrical performance imitating the Inca celebrations. Lots of young virgens (supposedly) and priests and the Inca King who [View Full Entry]

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Hola, Have now been in Peru since 7th June where I entered Puno from Copacabana in Bolivia. So that's just under 2 weeks now. In Puno I went to a museum called Museo de la Coca y Customs, in which I viewed a video highlighting the main traditional dances of Puno ( there are 400 recognised dances)- that was really interesting- shame I have since mixed them all up and can't remember the names or for what they were invented. There was one mocking the Spanish monarchy where they all dress up as the Spanish colonialists and swagger down the [View Full Entry]

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Amazing place so I quickly have to put some photos of it on before I lose all patience. We spent a night on the North part and did the walk back to the south to get the blood flowing. Lovely ruins there too. Skinny dipping was great fun but really cold! [View Full Entry]

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Just back now... It was good but not as I'd expected. We spent nearly all the time in the jeep, which was quite cramped. First day and I got an extra lolipop for sighting 4 condors on the ground. Apparently they were hunting. There was a mother and 3 young. I'd only ever seen them in the air before, so I was well chuffed (mostly about the lolipop though). My camera is useless so I don't have any good photos but some of the other in our group might have though. Will check. There were 6 of us tourists and a [View Full Entry]

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