Blogs from Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America - page 5

Tuesday. Woke again to roosters, and later to three military helicopters buzzing over our heads. Strange. I spent some time reading out on our balcony, listening to the neighbourhood slowly awaken. Another lovely breakfast in the garden, overlooking the little pool on the side of the hill. We tramped up the hill to Largo dos Guimaraes, where we caught the wonderful old tram (called the bodinho) almost immediately and hung on as we hurtled all the way down the hill, clackety-clunk, past magnificent old villas decaying in that tropical way, with vines and flowers covering the old stone walls bordering the cobblestone lane. Remarking on the jerkiness of the ride, Jeff wondered what made riding the tram so special, and we soon found out. As the tracks near the bottom of the hill and enter the ... read more

Sunday - on the road again. A long day of travel after a rather less than refreshing night on the bus. We reached Sao Paulo at 8:55 a.m. as promised, and found ourselves in a huge station of the size and caliber of any city airport, with the restaurants and souvenir shops to match. More than 80 gates! We’d soon bought our tickets for Rio and were back on the bus, “convencional” this time. At least the weather was gradually clearing as we went along, from rain and lightning to patches of blue sky as we rolled through increasingly mountainous terrain, the green hills interrupted by occasional small cities and frequent explosions of industry along the highway - including a huge GM Brazil complex. Half an hour before arriving in Rio, we made a long serpentine ... read more

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. But all we had to do was sign that we hadnt had a fever or cough in the past 15 days. Then on through passport, smirked at all the people waiting on luggage and skipped ... read more

So the final part of my SA blog is finally here...time has indeed flown away with itself Our next part of the trip was up to Iguazu Falls. We did both the Argentina side and the Brazil side. There were so many places to walk around in the Argentina side and so many vantage points to check out the falls. We also took a boat trip which took us Under the falls which was great fun. We got completely soaked and unfortunately someone stupidly forgot to take out their passport and purse from their pockets....so I now have a very manky looking passport to tell the tale. The falls are really impressive, but the most impressive is the number of rainbows you see, they are everywhere and as we were lucky with the weather they came ... read more

Jelikoz je trochu zatazino a prsi. Jdeme se podivat do MAM a potom se projet tramvaji po Santa tereze.... read more