TAM Airlines are no Ryanair! They welcome you with a sweet, feed you twice, keep you well hydrated and don't try to persude you to buy a single thing on the plane. It was a novel and pleasant experience to actually get value for our €70 per ticket. We almost didn't make the flight though, but this was mostly my fault. Having arrived at Salvador airport in good time, we presented ourselves at the GOL ticket desk. The guy behind the counter looked at us quizzically and fired off some rapid Portuguese in our direction. We responded with our favourite phrase [View Full Entry]

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Sunburn and backpacks don´t go well together. So it was with a grimace that I pulled on the backpack on Friday afternoon. Our bus wasn't until 7pm on Friday so we requested a later checkout time from the Pousada and spent our last day appreciating the delights of Arraial d'Ajuda. We bought shoes for Sinéad, treated ourselves to a nice fresh fish lunch and then got a final dip in the sea in before running the bus,ferry,bus gauntlet to arrive sweaty and extremely early to the general bus station. The night bus went better than the previous one. The bus was [View Full Entry]

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The trip from Vitoria to Porto Seguro didn't go well. I maintain that the principal reason for this is that we had too good a nights sleep in our own room in Domingos Martins. Philippe blames it on the two ignorant locals in the seats behind us who didn't appear to have been on a bus before, let alone a night bus. While I did notice that they didn't stop talking from the start of the voyage until the end, Philippe had the added joy of having his hair or shoulder pulled each time they wanted to get up out of [View Full Entry]

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A common fear when travelling on buses in a foreign land is that it will pass through the town you want to visit, and you will remain completely oblivious to the fact until you wind up in the middle of nowhere! It is for this reason that, on the bus to Domingos Martins, we sat looking wide-eyed out of the bus window for about 20 minutes before we were due to land. When someone who looked like a local person pulled the cord in the middle of a nice village, we decided we had arrived and hopped off. Lady Luck must [View Full Entry]

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We decided it was time to move on from Buzios - we were getting far too accustomed to the easy life! So with our backpacks tightly packed we boarded the bus to Rio. A short three hours later we were at the general bus station. We had some difficulty reserving our tickets for the trip to Vitoria online, so we had to pick them up from the ticket desk. Thankfully we found a ticket guy who saw the humour in our lack of Portuguese and as we surrendered our passport, he completed the necessary paperwork on our behalf. We were curious [View Full Entry]

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Before we left someone told me that the trip is as much about the people we meet as the places we see, so as we awoke this morning to the sound of norwegian chatter, I spared a thought for the poor Amercian kid who didnt get so much as a goodnight kiss last night from the leggy blonde he had spent the previous 4 hours chugging beer to impress. Although given that his opening line was 'so Norway, that's the one that's not in Scandinavia right?', it was probably always going to be an uphill struggle! As I drifted off to [View Full Entry]

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Philippe went on top on Monday night, and I took over last night. You can feel every movement down below and with so many people watching you it can freak you out. Welcome to the world of triple bunkbeds and shared dormitories! We decided to stay in Rio for one extra day and to continue our downgrading from luxury to budget we moved into the shared dormitory. It's not so bad, particularly as there are lockers where you can store your entire backpack. We knew we wanted to go to see Christ the Redeemer, but decided to shun the tour guides [View Full Entry]

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What day is it? "Is it Sunday today?" A definite good sign when you are trying to wind down is when you forget what day it is. After spending the rest of Friday hiding out from the rain we decided that we had enough of doing nothing and determined that we would get going on the touristy things. First up after a relatively painless accommodation change was tackling the Sugar Loaf. I was sure that Philippe would be sitting this one out what with his dislike of heights and all, but to my surprise and great pride, he bought his ticket [View Full Entry]

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We made it! The eleven hour flight turned into 13hours because we were late taking off and then had a hiccup in Brazil. I say hiccup but it was more like a collective gulp when the plane pulled up sharply during landing and then the captain said he couldnt land because there was stormy weather around the airport. So he did the sensible thing and circled for a while. Needless to say we were glad to step off the plane - only to be greeted by the swine flu patrol - masks and all. Queue second big gulp of the trip. [View Full Entry]

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So, one more day to go before we are flying out to London. We still have to pack, because we are soooo organised, and at this stage I wouldn't bet on everything fitting in the tiny bags. After having said most of our goodbyes tonight is a set aside for dinner with Sinead's family. At least the list is getting shorter, but it is a good way to ignore our fears and not get too carried away with our excitement. Through this blog we plan on keeping you up to date on our latest escapades. Please feel free to comment and [View Full Entry]

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