Happy days

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Rafting on Christmas Day seems a very long time ago now, we left Mendoza on 27th Dec and hired the mother of all trucks to drive across the Malbec plains to Cordoba. We stopped off for a couple of nights in a ranch on the way, playing swallows and amazons and even getting the boys on horseback.
Scenery was awesome and we had some fun condor spotting. From Cordoba, we got an overnight bus to Buenos Aires

We stayed in the beautiful neighbourhood of Palermo, Buenos Aires´answer to Notting Hill (minus the Trustafarians), cobbled streets full of trendy shops, cosy cafes and swanky bars and restaurants. Before NYE we managed to cram in some culture, visiting Eva Peron´s tombstone, which was much better than it sounds! After always talking of taking an open air double decker tour of London, we made it in Buenos Aires, visiting the famous Bombonera football stadium and all the main sights.







After a slow start to NYE when the clock struck midnight the streets filled with crazy Argentinians letting off fireworks all over the city. We found our way to a wicked bar where we made friends with everyone and danced til the early hours.

2007 beckoned and Florianopolis in Brazil was next on our hit list, a beautiful place for us to chill out and catch some sun rays and practise all that Portuguese we´ve been secretly storing up. After arriving to cloudy skies to rival Brighton in October the sun at last came out and we have spent the past ten days lazing around on the island´s 42 beaches. For the first four days we stayed in a pousada (apartment) in a gorgeous fishing village on the coast. And spent a lot of time on the beach perfecting our skills at bat and ball and eating fish fresh from the sea.

We then stumbled across a beautiful beach that has a bar and people in it which wouldn´t look out of place in ibiza, although everyone is either surfing or playing football volley ball rather than waving their hands in the air. Football volley ball is a mesmerising game that you have to be so skillful to play - i´m not sure half the city team would be able to beat some of these guys. 2 people on each side of the net playing the same rules as volley ball but only using their feet, chest or head.



We made some Brazilian friends and met them at their local beach yesterday. After a few hours of hanging out together on the beach they invited us back to their beach house for a barbq, beers and cards. We came away mesmerised and a lil drunk, such friendly lovely people. It made us think how unfriendly Londoners can be sometimes. The next Brazlian we meet in London we´ll invite back for some hotpot whilst Coronation Street is on the box.

Hiring a car tomorrow for a couple of days to explore some more of the island before flying to La Paz in Bolivia on Weds to visit Lake Titicaca, the Amazon and then by train into Peru xx

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