Another entry another day in brazil

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Some of you have commented on my entries being a bit on the boring side. So from now on i´ll try to make them a bit more interesting.

Day 26: Ruth is in the kitchen doing the womanly thing called dinner and alan is in the diary room.

Alan: well big brother i have been here a while and all i can think about is how do jacobs get the figs into the fig rolls????

Enough of that now and i´ll continue with the usual format of things.

March 6th 2006

Today was our last day in ouro preto, a fact i was pleased with as there is hardly anything to do in this town and its a bit dead. but to liven things up we decided to head to an old mine which was used to mine gold out of the ground. the mine was called Minas De Passegem. Now for some intersting facts about it. On the railcar down you travel about 300mts and drop to a depth of about 125m inside the mine. The mine was started in about the 1850´s and closed in 1985 when all the gold and other precious stones that they found in there dried up. Since then it has been turned into a tourist museum for tourists such as oursleves and ruth. So down we went to see it. It was impressive, they have all the equipment they used at the bottom of the mine for blowing holes in the rock and the drills that they used. Also at the bottom of the mine is a fresh water pool that you can swim in. So in we went to swim in the nice and cool water. We asked our guide how many people had died during mining years, he said he didnt know exact numbers but it was over 100,000 people. Those greedy Portugese for their gold!!! From there we headed to a town called Mariana. Again there was very little to do there except walk around and look at all the lovely churches that they had and since we were getting a night bus to Sao Paulo that evening we had nothing else to do. To be honest if anyone comes here you could both towns of Ouro Preto and Mariana in a day and you can include the mine in there for good measure.

March 7th 2006

Arrived in Sao Paulo after an 11 hour bus journey in which i didnt sleep one little bit. Enjoyable. Sao Paulo is Brazils biggest city consisting of about 20 million people. The population is supposed to rise to about 25 million by the year 2020 or there abouts. In a few words SP (as i like to call it) is huge, ginourmous, massive, too big. i would reckon it to be about 2-3 times the size of London. Anywho getting on the metro with backpacks in rush hour in SP is an experience i do not wish on anyone. You get stared at for taking up valuable cramming space for other people. Got to to the hostel easily enough and they decided to seperate us into seperate sex rooms. Havent seen that one in a while but thems are the rules. We headed out to see the Instuito Butanta. Its a museum dedicated to the research of snake/spider and scorpion venom and trying to get anti venoms for them. We seen rattel snakes being milked for their venom and they also had a house of snakes where they were ion kept in glass houses for people to stare at. There was particular rattle snake who didnt like being milked and prodded by the men in white coats and continued to rattle even after thy had let him go.

March 8th 2006

Today was going to be a full day of sightseeing, or so we thought. We had palnned to go see Aytron Sennas grave in a cemetry and then go to do a walk in an atlantic rainforest. but the hostel decided to be pricks. we had to do laundry and were going to use the hostel washing machine and dryer. but ruth found they were broke and went back to the reception to get the money back so we could drop it off into a laundrette. but they wouldnt give us the money back and it took them a whole two hours to get the washing machine fixed. Then when we asked how to get to the grave they sent us on the wrong bus. we got off at one point and asked some nice police men who were carrying shotguns about the length of my arm around with them. one of the nice policemen even had an m16!!! but they told us where to go properly and it was about a 4k walk from their little room on the street. It took us about 2,5 hours to find the grave. but it was worth it. its just a simple little grave in the middle of alot of other graves. It was about 4pm by the time that was over and it would take us about another 2 hours to get the bus and metro back to the hostel so the atlantic rain forest walk was out the feckin window.

March 9th 2006

this morning we went to see the first ever sky scrapaer ever built in SP. Called the martineeli building its about 29 stories high and was built in the 1920´s. You can take an elvator to the 26th floor to look out over SP. now when your up here you really get an idea of how big SP really is. there are just sky scrapers and apartment blocks as far the eye can see. its unreal, its too big for me i´m afraid. Then after being sent the wrong way again, we found Ipiruara city park. the largest city park in Brazil. It was very hot that day about 33 degrees and the humidity was a bit of a killer too so we didnt stay long. but as a matter of interest it house the museum of modern art and another musuem for smoething else i cant remember what.
we were going to go out that night so we asked the hostel where was the best place to go for food and pubs/bars. We were going to head to the japanese district (SP has the largest contingent of japs outside of japan in the region of about 250,000-300,000 people. it also has a good few other chink brands like chinese and koreans) but the hostel told us that it would be dead at night and not worht going to and that a district called Moema would be better. to be honest it was a mistake listening to what the hostel had to say to us and just do our own thing. it was dead, nothing there at all. what a waste of time. we got back to the hostel at about 11pm. very annoyed at them. but i liked SP, i wouldnt live there but its good to go just for a few days to see what its like. everyone says that it is rubbish but give it a go. its a more wealthy city than rio (it has car dealerships that rio would only dream of land rover, ferrari, jaguar etc. etc.) but if it had the party feel of rio then it would be a great city. but it just doesnt.

March 10th 2006

Today was the trip to another city called Curitiba. Its inland and is 1km above sea level. after a 6 hour bus journey and getting lost in the city we finally found where we were going to stay. we couldnt actually remember which hostel we had booked ourselves into so ruth (god belss her shes such a little trooper!!!) had to go find an internet cafe to see where we had booked. then we got lost on the rather confusing bus routes. the one we had to get had the same name on it whether it was going to the city centre or the suburbs. needless to say we got on the direction to go to the burbs. after askint some one in broken spanish and english she kindly responded in the most quickly spoken portugese you could have ever heard. eventually we found the right way to go with the help of some old man. the rest fo the day we spent inside the hostel and having dinner and having a few beers and actually watching a bit of tele. exciting, no????

March 11th 2006

we found an irish bar and went there to watch the rugby match. but it was closed so then we had to find an internet cafe so ruth could listen to it on the net and that ic ould check my e-mails and do other stuff like not download photos and not update the blog etc. etc. anywho that took most of the afternoon. then we had to buy tickets for a train ride to place called Paranagua (para-nag-wa). it only happens on the weekends for some strange reason. so by the time we had all that done it was evening so we didnt actually get to tsee much of Curitiba at all. got to see lots of the bus station though.

March 12th 2006

Got the train to Paranagua. now this train was built in 1880-1885 with the help of about 9000 men. there is a port a Paranaua and it was used and still is used to get good from the port to Curitiba. anywho the first part was designed by an italian engineer, but after doing the easy bit on level ground he either got sick and had to return home to his mama in italy or got an even better job in argentina and decided to piss off there. those are the two stories which concern him so pick one, personally i´m going with the mama one. missed the home cooking too much. anywho the train ride itself was magnificent. it wriggles its way along its 110km track through rain forest thorugh the mountains that surround Curitiba. if ever there was a spectacular train ride then this is it. it was so beautiful along the route. we have lots of pics and i promise one day we´ll actually sit down and download them and them off to people. we arrived in paranagua in the afternoon and had to wait to get a ferry to an island off the coast. the island is called Ilha Do Mel. it is paradise. white sandy beaches, plam trees and crystal clear waters all around the island. there are no cars or trucks allowed on the island, simply because there are just trials for people to walk on and no roads to speak of.

March 13th 2006 to March 16th 2006

Basically we lazed about all these days and say]t on the beaches that Ilha do Mel had to offer. and there are quite a few beaches on offer despite the sioze of the island. theres also a bit of a jungle if your interested in going through that. but there are no trails through it. we actually met 2 germans who went through some of it but decided to turn back after they noticed two spiders on a trees trunk that were about the size of my hand. the spiders did not look very friendly they said and so decided to turn back. the other thing we done was to go on a boat trip around the island. primarily it was to see dolphins which we did. they dont come near the boat though. but i did see one jump fully out of the water and do a half somersault before diving back into the water. not really much else to say about the island except lots of nice beaches and you can even surf if your up to it. also by the beach at encantadas there are two hills which if you look at them the right actually make out the profile of homer simpson lying down. nice. anywho next xtop on the trail is Foz Do Iguacu. this is right on the boarder with argentina and paraguay and is famous for the iguacu falls that we are going to see and probably do some white water rafting also.

but all thats to come in the next edition of ruth and als lonely planet. same bat channel, same bat time next week. tune in or miss out folks and remember e-mail me for my sanity [e-mail]

toodles.

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Comments

[Declan Gallagher]

Hush
Why won't the lambs stop screeming, whhhyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!