Brazil

After a 12 hour flight from Madrid, we were both absolutely knackered. We managed to get a bus from the airport, after being accosted by a million taxi drivers who wanted to charge us 80 reais. The bus cost 7 each, but we weren´t really sure if we were on the right bus... It turned out we were but the bus stop was about a mile from the hostel, so after a nice midnight hike through the streets of Ipanema we arrived at the hostel sweaty and tired.

Whilst in Rio we visited Sugar Loaf mountain (by ourselves!) and also took a taxi ride of a lifetime round the sights of Rio including Corcovado mountain with the Christ statue (which was fantastic and the highlight of Rio). The taxi driver was a complete lunatic and only spoke about 5 words of English, but he was great fun, and took us through the favelas (slums) of Rio and explained the history of them to us (via an Italian/Canadian/Romanian translator who shared the taxi with us). He also took us to Lapa Steps which are beautifully decorated by a lunatic artist with different tiles (and bath tubs!) from all over the world.

After a manic few days in Rio we headed to chill-out central Buzios, about 3 hours along the coast. It was discovered by Brigette Bardot some time in the 60s and the people there love her so much they erected a statue of her (which Rob decided to abuse - see photos). We were very impressed with the hostel there as we had our own personal hammock, which we made full use of.

From Buzios, we headed back to Rio to catch an overnight bus to Campo Grande which is the gateway to the Pantanal wetlands. The bus trip was about 24 hours in the end and we were both shattered once we arrived. We booked a 3 night package to leave the following morning. Lucy slept pretty much the whole day in Campo Grande. The next day we headed to our lodge deep in the Pantanal, and over the next 3 days went horse-riding, piranha fishing (and ate some!), trekking, jeep safari and a boat trip where our crazy tour leader, Sandro, fed piranha to some caiman (and almost had his hand bit off). We saw loads of different animals, but unfortunately as we have a crappy camera, the photos aren´t amazing. On the last night, we were headed to a party in another lodge and we had to walk across a pitch black field with our wind-up torch kindly donated by Pagey (Rob´s mate), and we saw a pair of eyes staring at us which happened to be a snake. We then shat ourselves and ran the other way. So unfortunately we never made it to the party.

After the Pantanal we went south to Bonito to do a bit of snorkelling in the Rio da Prata (Silver River) as the waters are crystal clear and fantastic for viewing fish. It was Lucy´s first time snorkelling, so she was given ´special´ treatment by our intense crackhead guide. On the way to the river we were ambushed by some monkeys who were playing overhead, and it was probably a better wildlife experience than the whole of the Pantanal!

We´re now off to Iguacu to see the waterfalls before heading over to Argentina where hopefully we will be able to communicate better with the locals, cos Portuguese is a bloody nightmare!