The beginning of the end...

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So this is it the LAST country,

And as usual took the very hard BUT cheap way!! First we rose from much needed deep sleep (the first in ages) at 4.30am in order trek to the bus stop 2 km away to catch the local bus 35km to the international airport - The private shuttle cost 40 peso´s each and the local bus 2 peso´s!!!!

Arrived in Sao Paulo after a four hour flight and then made our way straight to the bus station in the North of the city to try and get tickets direct to the small town of Arraila Do Cabo where we´ve decided to splash out - quite literally!!!

But as luck would have it all the buses were full so the only option is to go via Rio in the dead of the night, so the dilemma we face is do we stay late in Sao Paulo (rediculously high crime rate) and arrive in Rio at a convenient time or do we leave Sao Paulo earlier and arrive in Rio at a stupid hour in the morning and sleep in the bus station!! Hmmmmmm, leave early and sleep in Rio bus station we think.

Nic - Yep, a looonnng ol´couple of days were on the cards! It actually worked out quite nicely as we were left with a few hours to nip into the city and have a quick mooch around - just long enough to see most of the main sights (yet more historic buildings....Dan was delighted!) grab a bit of food and make it back to the bus station before dark, when all the "dangerous grizlies" come out to attack! (we´d read about these everywhere, could be a gross over-dramatisation, but hey, we fortunately didn´t have to find out!)

We jumped on the metro and arrived at Praça de Se, with it´s breathtaking cathedral set before a plaza, in which there seemed to be a huge number of, hmmm, lets just say ´Eccentric´ people, going about their 'business´!

Dan - Can I butt in, Sao Paulo probably has the most wierdo´s per square Km than any other place we´ve visited!!

Nic - Yes, I was trying to be diplomatic! We´d been warned that Brazil, and Sao Paulo especially, has a very high crime rate and so were more on guard as soon as we stepped off the plane (Don´t want to take any chances, and ruin the rest of our trip..........and as Dan´s mate Wez recently emailed us - "You´ve come all this way and so close to the end, Don´t f**k it up now!"....words of wisdom we thought!) It was a little daunting at first but fortunately as we wondered down a few streets we left them behind to do there thing in the plaza! Another very beautiful city and from first glance it was only really the shell of it that we liked - the small part of the city that we saw seemed to be just bargain basement stores set inside the most beautiful buildings, it was a really weird contrast! But hey, who know´s, if we´d stayed longer we may´ve got to grips with it?!...let´s just say the few hours we had were enough and we weren´t sorry to leave so soon!

So we made it back to the bus station with only an hour to spare before our ride to Rio de Janero. WE´re a little apprehensive as to how things will pan-out for the rest of our trip - it has a great potential to go very very wrong!.....This is our dilemma: It´s now Carnival in most of Brazil, ESPECIALLY Rio and also Arraila do Cabo, our intended destination.....We have no accomodation booked for Arraila, we don´t even know if there´s any space on the bus that goes there from Rio and we´re hoping to do some diving - which we also haven´t booked!.....we also have the small worry that the accomodation we have booked later in Rio might not take us as they´ve previously sent us an email saying they wont honour our booking........Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhh...

....The journey continues in our next blog!!!!
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