We arrived at our hostel at ten pm after four hours on the bus - well ahead of schedule. We were shown to our air conditioned room. It had all worked out well, the bus to Salvador would have been 16 hours, this would have been quite painful for Tas and her sunburned back, which was now glowing quite red around her ivory white panty-shaped ass. We were both asleep in minutes and late to rise so we never got to meet the kind guest who had secured our booking. The following day was spent getting our bearings. The town proved [View Full Entry]

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The journey to Caravelas was via a town called Teixeira De Freitas or Texas Chips as it came to be known by me and Tas. The bus station was horrible and we had to spend 3 hours there waiting for a connecting bus to Caravelas. We were being watched all the time and I am sure that if we had taken our eyes off our bags for any period of time they would have been stolen. Still 'it's all good' as the Aussies say and we arrived at the quiet town of Caravelas in good fettle mid- afternoon. We found a [View Full Entry]

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Carnaval Friday: After living out of a bag for ten weeks we were as much looking forward to hanging up our clothes for 5 whole days as we were Carnaval. We were over the moon with our hotel with roof-top pool and bar one block from Ipanema beach. This was to be expected however as we had booked the hotel when we were both working and money had less value. What we spent on the hotel for 5 days accommodation alone is our current budget for 2 whole weeks total spend - but it turned out to be worth it. We [View Full Entry]

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There are many facets to Carnaval, it is not like Notting Hill Carnival where there is one procession down a determined route. Things are not organised in Brazil not even the time always makes sense. (Look out for later update.) The main parts are the Blocos and The Sambodrome Parade. There are many Blocos that parade around various parts of the city. The Blocos have a name and a theme such as Banda De Ipanema. Ipanema is a predominantly gay area so the Banda De Ipanema Bloco has a gay and transvestite theme. The Bloco consists of a few musicians playing [View Full Entry]

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Ilha Grande is a quiet Island just off the South Coast of Rio. It is covered with Atlantic rainforest, has only two cars (ambulance and police car) and has loads of quiet clean beaches which can only be accessed by boat or long walks. The first day was spent getting famliliar with our surroundings and catching up with things. The intention was to update the blog, unfortunately internet access on the island was that slow it seemed to be via WAP, so we gave it up as a bad job. The night was spent with an Irish couple (Sarsha and Peter), [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at Curitiba at 6.45 am after a comfortable journey on the Leito. We had a coffee/tea in the bus station cafe to re-energise ourselves then headed off to the train station to get the tourist train to Paranagua. The journey was advertised as a scenic, romantic journey through the mountainous atlantic rainforest of the South-East of Brazil. What they don´t advertise is the fact that it only runs once a day at a time when civilised people are re-energising themselves over coffee/tea in the bus station. Nor do they advertise that the train is only a tourist train on [View Full Entry]

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For Valentines Day we decided to treat ourselves to a night in the beautiful colonial hotel in the Falls National Park (Brazilian side). After a few nights of camping we were looking forward to actually feeling clean again; not to speak of the TV (complete with CNN and FOX) and a hairdryer! After checking in as early as as they would let us we went to the bar and sampled a few cocktails before a quick dip and a game of volleyball in the pool. The hotel was mainly full of rich americans. (Many of whom Noel noticed had younger looking [View Full Entry]

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The Life Challenge is a series of games that me and Tas decided to play last year and will continue playing until we are no longer of sound mind and body. In order to win a point 3 games of a chosen challenge are played e.g. 3 games of tennis. The person who wins the majority of the three games wins a ´Life Challenge´point. The scores so far are: Noel 3 Tas 3 made up of the following games: Tennis 1 - Tas Pool 1 - Tas Pool 2 - Noel Darts 1 - Noel Volleyball 1 - Noel Volleyball 2 [View Full Entry]

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We were pretty slow at leaving Bonito - partly because we liked it there and partly because we thought our bus journey to Foz would be hell. It was. The journey was supposed to toke 17 hours but ended up being 23! This wasn´t too bad, we are getting used to long buses, however for 7 hours, a Brazilian girl sitting next to us shouted, sang and told jokes at the top of her voice. By the time she got off I was climbing the walls and even Noel (who is the most tolerant person in the world) was irrate. But [View Full Entry]

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We got the farm truck from the Pantanal to a building that sat on a cross-road, it was a very strange place. We were greeted by a young gentleman in military uniform with a gun and jack boots which gave the impression the building was a State border post, however he beckoned us into the office in a ´make yourself at home´way. A few of us went in and a few of us waited outside. In the corner of the room was a small TV showing the final stages of a Samba competition, the guard was very much enjoying the girls [View Full Entry]

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