rio and salvador

---

so before the craziness of carnaval kicks off thought we should write our first blog, having finally sorted it out!! you must excuse the english its been going downhill ever since we left heathrow,


our first slight crisis may have been the crash in heathrow which added a further 3 hours on to our already 12 hour flight, with the pilot reassuring us all not to be alarmed but the wheel carriage of a BA flight had packed up..good good..

15 hours later we arrived in sao paulo airport ready to get the shuttle bus to our hotel, 3 miles away..no no it was a 50 minute taxi ride away and cost us R$ 102 (about 30 pounds)..seems fairly reasonably but when you've been on a plane for 15 hours and arrive in a south american city at 1.30 am with nothing but horror stories filling you brain R$ 102 is pretty expensive-especially when you're looking forward to a good exchange rate...which reminds me we hadn't checked the exchange arate at this point so had no idea how much we were being charged..or if we even going to get to the hotel. somehow we managed it and also managed to get to rio via bus the next day-where we got in a night again-think we mioght have some morbid fascination of tempting fate!!anyhoop decided to take the local bus at 9pm with all our luggage and only a vague clue of where we were going (later got told to "never take the bus at night"..oh good!) and when we arrived at the hostel that everyone says is an absolute must to stay at (stone of beach for those in the know) they told they had no room but said there was another hostel down the street. so out we tramped with all our belongings, blindingly white and looking lost (the classic tourist look!) after 10 minustes of being determinded to find a needle in a haystack we decided to go back and ask again, and after a bit of bottom lip trembling and puppy dog eyes we bagged ourselves a bed for the night (thats 1 bed, for the two of us-happy travellers i think not!)

after though booked a quality hostel that had amazing vews of the christ and sugar loaf, pleased with ourselves we headed to the beach, where we had a fews of hours of sunshine before a man started pointing to the sky going "agua, agua"..and the sky opened and didn't close the whole week!! we managed to do the touristy things, and hiked up sugar loaf rather than take the cable car-complained the whole way up but when we got to the top decided that it was easy and so have been telling people to do it when they get to rio as well (ha ha ha ha!)..but definitely hike up sugar loaf!

we decided to fly up to salvador in the end rather than take the bus because although its slightly cheaper it is a 1 hour flight but a 22 hour bus trip (and is also an hour behind, although still on the same latitude..think its because the bahians have no concept of time and do it whenever they feel like it-suprise carnaval is up and running!!) what we have discovered in salvador is firstly that we should not be allowed to travel on our own as something invariably goes wrong normally ending up in the wrong place or panicking and getting off our form of transport and realising as its leaving that we have no idea where we are..! in rio we had walked up this hill and reached a favela (the shanty towns) except the 'F' was covered so we mused over the fact that the little village maybe called 'evela' which sounded nice and brazilian guy ushered us to go in...just as the paper covering the 'F" waffed up..mmm gave that one a miss!but found ourselves in a favela area in salvador where we got on the wrong bus- just trying to find the beach- and decided that this time we were not going to panic, even though playing 'i can see the sea' got harder and harder to continue with!! stayed on the bus until it stopped and we all got kicked out..in the middle of no where, where sign language and gestures fell on deaf ears (or blind eyes)..got to the beach though...3 hours later! secondly the sun is much stronger here and after a week of no sun (and 2 years before that!!) we should not be suprised that we burnt oursleves and have being rueing the consequences ever since!..met some lovely people on the bus back though-who told me that with my fair skin i should be wearing factor 60 (nice but not going to happen!!) but they all told me different suncream to buy and told me to be careful and told us that we should be very aware during carnval and take nothing with us-no watches, earrings, cameras, wallets etc etc- so nice of them to say because most point and laugh (stupid gringos..though i keep insisting to everyone that i am actually brazilian..not sure anyones buying it yet!!)

and now the cloud has followed us again... (pictures to follow..)

---