When my baby smiles at me I go to......Sao Paulo!

Now, I mentioned many hours of plane travel ahead to get us to South America...I didn't anticipate the drama that would accompany it! First of all our flight from Johanessburg was delayed on the tarmac for over an hour, then after 10 hours in the air we arrived in Sao Paulo....where we were delayed for a further 90 minutes in the departure lounge & another 40 minutes on the tarmac. We finally arrived in Rio at 1am only to find that Andrew's bags had not arrived...or so we thought. After waiting another hour we were eventually told that the bag was actually at the airport, just in another room...huh?? We were reunited with all our stuff & jumped in a taxi bound for our hostel. AT 2.30am we finally checked in & went to bed....aaahhhh!! The next few days were spent catching up on sleep & hanging out in the hostel....& more than a few hours lying on the beach at Ipanema & Copacabana. It has to be said that Rio is all about worshipping the sun & there was definitely no shortage of beautiful bodies to perve at!!

Photo: Ipanema Beach

On our final day in Rio, before leaving on the tour, we headed up to the statue of Christ The Redeemer, which looks out over the city. We caught the local bus out to the starting piont for the excursion & despite the gloomy weather we had a great time trekking up the hill to the base of the statue. Unfortunately the sun was behind his face so the photos aren't that great but is was still a pretty amazing moment seeing it in the flesh.

Photo: Christ The Redeemer


After spending an hour or so hanging out with Christ, we headed back down the hill to see if we could successfully navigate our way back to the hotel. After managing to find the correct bus (we made friends with the conductor who assured us that he would tell us which stop to get off at), it started to rain. Not just a little bit of drizzle.....no, giant rain drops that had the streets flooded in about 10 minutes...great!! Eventually our new friend the conductor, indicated that we needed to get off & he pointed down a street that should lead us to our hotel.....SHOULD being the operative word!! We jumped off the bus & ran in the pouring rain in the direction we thought he said...& found nothing familiar. We stopped & asked a lovely lady in a shop for directions (not easy when NO ONE speaks english & our Portugese is atrocious!!) & eventually we arrived at the hotel looking like a couple of drowned rats! Of course, because we were looking our best, a couple of people from our new tour were waiting in the foyer for our pre-departure meeting....& didn't they look impressed!!


We cleaned ourselves up though & had a great dinner with our new family (Kiwi's, Poms & a Canadian) in a local restaurant where you pay for your food by the kilo - novel idea but quite common in South America! After dinner we set the alarm for 4am - to catch the South Korean F1 GP....which was unfortunately delayed but in the meantime Andrew found a replay of Bathurst from the previous weekend so he was happy! After watching Marky crash out & jumping on the bed when Seb's car stopped :), we headed down to join the rest of the group on day one of our tour - Rio to Paraty!

Photo: The cobblestone streets of Paraty

We headed out in Magaly (our overland truck) down the coast of Brazil to our first stop Paraty & a couple of nights camping on the beach - gorgeous! The next day we caught the local bus down to the tiny coastal town of Trinidade & spent the day hanging out on the beach. The only stress of the day came on the bus ride home. The driver seemed to spend more time chatting to his mate on the front seat than keeping his eyes on the road!
 
 

Photo: Miles of desserted beach at Trinidade
 
 
The next couple of days were spent travelling through Brazil on the way to Foz de Iguazu & the Iguazu Falls. We did have one particularly interesting night when we pulled up at a truck stop & with a collective groan realised we were actually going to camp there! The mist rolled in & the place started to look really eerie....it freaked me out! To make matters worse, there was a creepy, half-naked guy hanging out on his veranda about 20 meters away, watching us.....eeek!
 
 

Photo: Spooky....camping at the truck stop!
 
 
The evening passed without anyone waking up missing a kidney....although we were visited by gypsies during the night who built us a nice sculpture! The weird thing is I could have sworn I heard the one of the gypsies talking with a distinctly Kiwi accent.....hmmmmm, must have been my ears!! 
 

Photo: Those damn gyspsies!!