So we arrived in the fab, and very hot (30oC), city of Rio on Tuesday afternoon and checked into Ipanema Beach House which had been recommended to us (more expensive 42 reais/15 pounds). It´s a chilled, friendly hostel with a nice pool and a great location. The dorms have triple bunk beds and thankfully we didn´t get the top which is very high up and nearly touches the ceiling. For the rest of the day we checked out the area, Ipanema is a wealthier, classier pa...

Sao Paulo is the largest and richest city in Brazil and with a population of over 10 million it´s the most populous city in Brazil, South America and the southern hemisphere. We arrived to the bus station at 5.15am and, at 6am, bought our bus ticket for the 8am bus to Paraty (42 reais/14 pounds). 270km west of Rio is a bit of coastline known as the Costa Verde (the Green Coast). The scenery is stunning, lush rainforests, huge mountains, lagoons, secluded bays a...

Had a great journey with lots of red wine and big glasses of whiskey (think the guy took a shine to us). We also had either English films or subtitles so we could actually understand the films which is a rare thing, the only bad thing was the smelly toilet. The heat hit us as soon as we got off the bus in Puerto Iguazu (25oC). We got the yellow el practico (local bus) to Hostel Inn, 5km out of town. It was funny because nearly the whole bus was backpackers obviou...

We had a great first night in Buenos Aires with Juana (Mark & Sarah´s Argentinian friend) and it was good to go out with the locals. On Friday we visited the museum at the Cabildo (old town hall) which is free on Fridays it´s all that´s left of the colonial arches that once surrounded the square & there´s also a lovely handicraft market in the courtyard. Also had a walk round Monserrat a good barrio (neigbourhood) for nosing around old churchs like Ba...

A funny thing happened to us last Saturday in El Boson. Just after I´d finished the blog we went to find out the times of the bus to Puerto Madryn. In broken spanish we asked the lady the times of the buses the next morning and she relpied that the buses only go at 7pm or 8pm (it was 6.30pm). We chatted to ourselves and decided to buy a ticket for the 7pm bus that night. Jem bought it while I ran back to the hostel, told the owner and then packed. When the bus a...