Bonito Bonito wins the award for most clever tourism slogan - "Bonito é bonito" ("bonito" means "pretty" in Portuguese). Slightly more clever is the slogan "Bonito é lindo," which always means "Bonito is pretty." Anyways, Bonito is a very very beautiful place so I guess they have the right to say so. Somewhere in the middle of the state of Matto Grosso do Sul, Bonito is a town where tourism is thriving because of a series of fresh water rivers with exotic fish and water so clear that you can actually snorkel. We arrived in Bonito Sunday morning, after an exhausting [View Full Entry]

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Since my first trip to Argentina six years ago, Iguazu Falls has always been somewhere where I wanted to visit. I remembered hearing many times that it made Niagara Falls in New York look tiny, and that it was one of the most impressive natural wonders of South America. I finally got my chance to see Iguazu Falls as the third destination in my tour of Brazil, and it didn´t disappoint. A Long Day of Travelling, and Lots of Stolen Electronics in Paraguay We left Parati for Iguazu at 9:00 AM Tuesday, and did not arrive until 11:30 AM Wednesday. That [View Full Entry]

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This entry is a little different then many of my others. I have tended to keep my feelings out of most of the entries and instead offered general descriptions and observations. When I have had to, I have described my feelings in very general terms: "I like," "I don´t like," "it was fun," "there was no one there." But, something happened back home - the death of a friend - which really marked my time in Rio, and I felt like I needed to write about it. Arriving in Rio and Meeting the Group My first day in Rio started off [View Full Entry]

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I guess I really am "a tumbleweed in the wind" - as a comment to one of my earlier posts suggested. Trying to do Everything Bahia was always in my plans, but around the time I started getting sick and bored of going to the beach alone in Recife, I decided to skip the next two stops on my itinerary - Macieo and Iracajú - and head straight to Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia. From what I had heard, Maceio and Iracajú didn´t have much to offer but beaches. Salvador, meanwhile, is not only a cultural mecca, but [View Full Entry]

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Six days of staying in a hostel finally caught up with me. I got sick and spent half my time here in Recife recovering. Thank God it wasn´t the food poisoning sick that happened to me several times in Chile, just a really bad cold. Olinda On my way out of Natal, I picked up two brochures for hostels in the Recife area. One was for a hostel in Olinda, the other for a hostel in Boa Viagem. Olinda is a historical city a couple kilometers north of the city center, and Boa Viagam is the nice beach area south of [View Full Entry]

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Natal begins my two week tour of the Northeast. The northeast is reputed to have some of the best beaches in the world. It is also one of the poorest areas of Brazil, so I had been warned that things will be very different from the more developed south. Natal Natal is a state capital on the north eastern coast of Brazil of about 800,000 or so people. I arrived in Natal about 2:00 in the afternoon. The hostel I was going to stay at was called "Lua Cheia" ("Full Moon") and I was told by the Uruguayan girl who was [View Full Entry]

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Earlier in the week I wrote my grandma that I had a "big surprise," but that she would have to wait until Friday to read the travel blog. I shouldn´t have added the superlative. My grandma emailed me back - "You are staying in South America?" "You are bringing back a girl?" Even my parents, who knew of the "surprise" emailed me to say they were all waiting. My dad asked if I was bringing back a love child. Sorry to disappoint. The surprise is, I decided to ditch the last week of my language classes and go to Minas Gerais. [View Full Entry]

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If anyone wants me to bring back some chicken, let me know. The big story here is that a few Eastern European and Middle Eastern Countries cut off imports of chicken from Brazil using bird flu as a pretext (despite there being no bird flu in Brazil). Most of the chicken in Brazil is raised in the state of Florianopolis, so the supermarkets are overstocked and sellling packs of chicken with Arabic writing for about US$0.25 a pound. I am also taking orders for Viagra and Cialis, which are sold in big display cases by the checkouts in pharmacies. No prescription [View Full Entry]

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This week is all about deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceleration. I packed a lot into the first 10 days of my trip in Chile and Argentina. For this week and the next three, I am in Florianopolis, taking Portuguese lessons. Florianopolis is an island in the south of Brazil, and capital of the Santa Catarina province. The island is big - about 42 km north to south, and maybe 20 km east to west at its widest. There are about 370,000 people who lived on the island, but the population doubles in the summer. The island has 43 beaches, and mountains. It is beautiful. My [View Full Entry]

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Several hours ago, when I was uploading my pictures from Chile, I started to worry about the time. It was about 8:00, and I was supposed to go out with an Argentine girl I worked with, Noelia, and her friends. Shortly after, Noelia sent me an IM on the new gmail chat, asking what time I wanted to meet up. I said it was up to her, so she said, "Ok, how about after dinner, like at about 1 or so." Such is life here in Buenos Aires. Rewind: I arrived about midday on Thursday the 2nd in Buenos Aires. Originally, [View Full Entry]

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