I´m lost, can you help me find jesus?

Hello!

Well, I’m off exploring again after my quick jaunt home. I really enjoyed being back home and strangely enough didn’t want to leave again, but now I’m here, I’m definitely getting back in the swing of things!

Typically I found myself starting this new leg of the trip sitting behind the devil child from hell, who insisted on throwing her chair back at every opportunity, then climbing on to the back of it to shout at her friend who was behind me - she was so close that I couldn’t look forwards otherwise I would have head butted her - god I love children!!

We started our journey in Rio, arriving early in the morning with warnings of ´bag slashers´ringing in our ears, it was not without trepidation that we left the airport and hopped on our first bus into town. After a quick perusal we found a little guest house in Catate (who indecently brought us breakfast in bed!! who cares that it was a couple of stale rolls and bitter coffee!!!). Our first mission was to find me a bikini. I stupidly had arrived in South America without one after not being able to find one at home - seriously, why does no-one sell bikinis in November?! I didn’t think it would be too much of a hardship, after all, isn’t Brazil the capital of the Bikini? What I had forgotten to take into account is that it is also a nation who likes to bare EVERYTHING, I soon learnt why the ¨Brazilian¨ exists, obviously material is a pretty precious commodity over here!! After scouring the shops for something that would cover by bum, or pretty much anything, I drew a blank. Finally salvation was close at hand when I discovered the conveniently names ´shopping centre´stop on the metro. We headed out there with not much hope of saving my dignity, and we weren’t initially proven wrong, there were bikini shops, but these were just designer versions of the ones we had already seen, tooth floss at a premium price!! Eventually I managed to find something which resembled a bikini and by closing my eyes when I paid, I didn’t feel too bad about the designer tag!

So the next day we were off to experience the delights of Copacabana beach. Although I was initially disappointed that there were no dancers with feather head-dresses on prancing around the streets to the sound of Samba, I got over it and started to enjoy the beautiful (if slightly dirty) white sandy beaches. Unfortunately this is where I found a flaw in my beautiful new bikini; apparently it is certainly not designed with function in mind, the extra expensive material in fact turned out to be a disadvantage when trying to get into the somewhat choppy sea. The particular item I had bouhght had a thick band across the top of the bikini bottoms which is slightly looser than the rest. Well I’m sure you can imagine, one wave and the band is flooded with water, dragging the rest down too - classy!!! Luckily we pretty much had the beach to ourselves, but the thong look is starting to be a bit more appealing!!

The following morning we were up bright and early to explore the other sights of Rio, after a morning of wandering we decided it was time to go and see the huge statue of Christ. After hopping on a bus which we thought went in the right direction (FYI Portuguese is nothing like Spanish, I can’t understand anything, ok could be cos my Spanish is rubbish too....!!!) Anyway, after seeing Christ appearing and disappearing behind various mountains, we were slightly concerned to be heading in what appeared to be the wrong direction - it felt a little like the time we couldn’t find the Vatican, it couldn’t be this hard surely?! So as we arrived at the end of the line and were told to get off the bus we found we had ended in a really dodgy looking bus station in a rough part of town and after looking around in a confused manner for a few minutes I found myself saying in desperation some words I never thought I would hear coming out of my mouth "excuse me Mr Policeman, I’m lost, can you help me find Jesus?" whilst looking vacant and pointing at the sky - think I looked like a loon heading straight for some kind of commune, but fortunately, I discovered a picture of the statue and after pointing at it and saying "Jesus" a few more times he seemed to get the gist and put us on the right bus, yay!!! The statue itself was absolutely amazing, well worth the trouble of getting there, it really is just so huge, and when the sun breaks from behind the clouds above its head, he really does look quite magical.

We left the next day for a beautiful island called Ihla Grande, despite being lead to believe it was a remote island (thanks lonely planet!) it was actually full of people trying to rent out their rooms, however not enough people that we could find somewhere that would let us stay for more than two days, apparently we had managed to come right in the middle of a major national festival, and thousands of people were due to descend on the island in just a couple of days time. Oh well, had to make the best of it, so we spent the first day (very rainy) just wandering around the town and walking around some of the island. The next morning we were greeted by our first day of beautiful sunshine since we had arrived in Brazil and we took the opportunity to walk for 3 hours to one of the prettiest beaches I have seen. The walk itself was sweaty and not so pretty, but when we arrived at the beach, the jungle opened up to reveal beautiful white sands, fringed by a forest of palm trees and beautiful clear water (which I couldn’t go in, due to the afore mentioned problem!) we got to spend a few blissful hours lazing on the beach before we had to re-trace our steps for another 3 hours to get home, totally worth it, but a shame we couldn’t stay longer - there were boats back, but typically we had no money with us, so walking it was!!

We had to leave the next day, much to our disappointment, but on a plus side, it was absolutely belting it down with rain, so we didn’t feel too bad!! Our next destination was a little further south to Paraty, a really pretty little town with beautiful buildings and little cobbled streets. Unfortunately, everything here was also booked dup and we ended up in a bare cavern of a room with a huge window looking out on to the street - normally a nice feature, except that this one didn’t close, so we basically had a huge hole in our wall, a bonus if its warm but in fact it was freezing and rained solidly for the whole time we were there, couple that with the fact that our communal bathroom (not that anyone else was daft enough to stay there) was often pitched into darkness when the lights failed, it didn’t leave a glowing impression on me. A shame as the place itself would have probably been lovely in other circumstances, but as it was, I couldn’t wait to leave!! Our initial plan was to go to Iguaçu Falls, we had to go via Sao Paulo, but as neither of us really wanted to go there ( I blame Mrs Skermer my Geography teacher for always using it as an example of slums!) we were just going to travel straight through, it would mean 2 days of travelling, but we’re hardcore, we can take it!! As it turned out, it wasn’t the length of travelling that changed our minds, more the huge price tag on the bus tickets, we decided it couldn’t be more expensive to go from Argentina, so changed our plans and headed further south in the hopes of finding some sunshine.

We arrived the next day in Florianopolis (not a made up name, honestly!) where we spent a few blissfully sunny days, lying on the beach and exploring. Emma had a little surf, but managed to land strangely and hurt her foot, we got a few funny looks as I gave her a piggy back home (seemed more ladylike that a fireman’s lift!)but made it back, and decided to stay another day so she could rest it before having to put the huge packs on again. With Em feeling a little better the next day we had another beachy one, and headed to Puerto Algre the following morning.

I can honestly say I wasn’t a big fan of Puerto, from the moment we got off the bus people were warning us it was too dangerous to walk into town. One guy went totally over the top and offered to get on a bus, get his car and come back for us, hmm, maybe just a taxi hey?! In an attempt to rid ourselves of the ever persistent Jose, we had to give him our email address before jumping into a cab. He however was not satisfied that we would get to our destination so proceeded to call the hotel and was horrified to find out we had decided not to stay there and moved to a different place (we later found this out in a dramatic email he sent to us, proclaiming to be very worried and asking us to call him straight away so he could come and collect us and take us to stay at his house) so after spending a couple of days looking over our shoulders trying to avoid our new found ´friend´, and after stepping over what we assumed to be a dead tramp in the street (heartless yes, but not much we could do about it) we hurriedly packed our things and headed south to the promised tranquillity of Uruguay.

Don’t worry Uruguay will be short....only beaches and pretty buildings!

Our first stop was the town of Punto del Este, after a quick walk around we realised that it was way out of our price range ( apparently the most expensive resort town in south America, should have guessed!) so we hopped on a bus to the much more tranquil location of Punta del Diablo. It was a gorgeous place to spend a few days, we rented a really cute little cabaña from a woman who lived in a hut next door - felt slightly bad as I’m not sure she even had a bathroom, though on retrospect she probably just came in and used ours! The isn’t much to do a Diablo apart from walk on the very blustery beach, chill out and eat ice cream, which is exactly what we did. Added to that we took advantage of the deserted beach to start to learn to poi (fire dance, what ever you want to call it!), with out fire at first as I am a walking disaster area. My legendary lack of co-ordination makes the prospect of dancing alone a little alarming, add fire into the equation and we all know that at some point my hair is going to be set on fire, and once that goes up.....! Fortunately at the moment we are just using tennis balls on strings, so apart from a few black eyes, I’m still in one piece!

Our next destination, La Paloma was much of the same, except this time we swapped our beach side cabaña for one in the middle of a pine Forrest, complete with our own bbq and fire place. We had a very interesting meal of Pizza cooked on top of a saucepan lid, over a roaring fire - its ok; I’ve grown to love charcoal! It was lovely to have a little fire every night, especially as our cabaña wasn’t exactly draught free!

From there we had a little jaunt to Montevideo (still don’t know whether its pronounced like rodeo drive of video?) which is a gorgeous city full of old colonial buildings and parks, after a few days of wandering and somehow ending up at their local zoo (very sad to see jaguars and tigers in such tiny cages) we were ready to head to Buenos Aires, via the little port town of Colonia del Sacramento, very pretty, more of the same!

So that was our first part of our Journey, We headed to Argentina for Christmas and here we are. I’ll save those delights for another time. The poi is going a little better too, much fewer bruises and apparently to a two year old who has been sharing our little place we live in, I’m hilarious, though I think that may have more to do with my face than the poi, sheer terror often amuses children!

Anyway, bye for now, love you all loads, hope you had fantastic Christmases and New Years

Sarah xxx

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