We left our hostel an hour before our bus was due to leave, we thought this would be adequate time for the 115 minute walk to the supermarket, stock up on supplies at the supermarket, check in and get ur bus tickets and change our Uruguayan Pesos for Brazilian Real. The Uruguayan check-in was typically efficient, but this time super slow. Meaning it was a race against time for us to finish what we needed to do. A mad dash and a sprint finish got us on t the night bus in time. I was super starving having skipped the dinner of plain rice earl had offered me in favour of finding something more fancy at the Supermarket. I had a found a cheese and ham pie. It was a good sized pie too. I demolished this straight away, along with a cereal bar. I also discovered that instead of buying Orange Juice had had purchased Orange flavoured Soya Milk. It was disgusting. The next thing I know a woman is bringing around an airplane meal for us for the journey. It was chicken with potato croquets, a sandwich, two biscuits, a bread roll and another slice of cheese and ham pie. I was still full from my original pie, but I wasn't passing up this food the chicken was delicious so ate this. I was suitably stuffed after my two dinners. I watched the Iron Man 2 movie they put on and then pretty much slept the rest of the 12 hour journey. I even slept through the border crossing. Again the Uruguayans had shone in sorting all that out for us. But it was a little strange we could have smuggled anything ever the border and they checked nothing.

We arrived in Porto Alegra a little after 8am. This gave us just shy of 24hours in our first Brazilian city as we were to get a day bus to a place called Curritiba the next day. First things first we went to the hostel to check in, we couldn't do that until 2pm, so we left our bags and then went in search of a bank to get some more Brazilian currency. This turned out to be much more of an ordeal than expected. The cash machines in the near buy supermarket wouldn't accept Visa debit cards, so we decided to head back to the hostel and asked if there was another bank. The chap on reception directed us to a nearby street which had three, a Santander, and a few Brazilian banks. We thought that the Santander would surely be able to accept Visa Debit cards. They weren't. Neither was the next bank. Or the one after. We only had one left, panic was setting in a bit. It was up to the Brazilian bank of Brandesco or something to save our bacon. Could it? Yes it could and it even had the option of English language! We had access to money again! Earl however, had a bit more of an ordeal at the banks; on entry each bank had a metal detector. Earl in his day bag was unnecessarily carrying around with him a pocket pen knife which he had to awkwardly get out at each bank. I thought the security guards wouldn't take that kindly too someone trying to enter with a sharp object but in fairness they all semt ok with it. I liked the system of the metal detector, made quite a bit of sense. We also learnt about Brazilian banks that the locals could remove money by just using their finger print, which was another good idea in my opinion. Left me wondering how long it would be before we'd be able to start paying for tings with just a thumb print instead of the chip and pin process.

The street our hostel was on was full of bars. It gave me the party and carnival atmosphere that I was expecting in Brazil. We made our way into town as like I said we only had 24 hours to see Porto Alegra. We walked up to the river, where we noticed there was a floating bar. The sun was shining; it would be rude not to celebrate our arrival in a new country with a beer. So we did. It was a perfect bar and day for an all-day drinking session, a Sunday session, any kind of drinking session. But we resisted the urge and only had two. We thought we had better do some touristy stuff so we could show our Mothers and Fathers that we weren't just getting drunk every night. So we took a stroll to the Public Market that was raved about, it was poor, it had a good selection of fresh foods but not much else and I found the market to be pretty small. After hearing so much about it and it being one of the most rated things to do on trip advisor it definitely didn't live up to expectations. We then saw that you could do an open top bus tour of the city for just under 5 of queen's finest pounds. We thought this would be a perfect way to see and find out about the entire city in such a short time. So after watching some street performers jump through loops with knifes in them we hopped on the bus and began our tour. The bus route took us by football stadium for Independiante which was also going to be used for one or two world cup games. We also got to see the court house, San Pedro Theatre, some parks, and a cathedral amongst many other old buildings ad sights. Truth be told I found the tour quite boring, it lasted for two hours and half way through I even managed to doze off for a while. I don't think I missed much. After the tour we headed back to the hostel. I had managed to get us slightly lost on our way back but we got there eventually. We checked in, freshened up and then thought it would be rude not to have a few beers. So we went down stairs where we were joined by another Brit called Lee. He was a graphic designer from London and supported Arsenal. He had been in Brazil already for two and a half months. He was able to give us some good advice and reassure us that Brazil is not as bad as they make out and the likelihood of us getting into any bother or being mugged was slim. He had only encountered one incident himself in Salvador where he was mugged for a sandwich! We drank into the early hours of the morning, riding the bus as usual and inventing a new game called split the deck. Also I forgot to mention I was also asked to appear on Brazilian TV, but unfortunately due to pre-arranged travel arrangements I was unable to tend the filming. So my TV career is still on hold.

Drinking might not have been our wisest idea with having to get a bus at 8am the next day. We woke up more than likely still a bit pissed and made the 1.6 mile walk to the bus station. The bus was going to be a 13 hour journey; with us being a bit worse for wear it made sleeping no problem at all. I also had a book to read, and my iPod was filled with a couple of great playlists and I could also play solitaire on there so I was not short of entertainment for the journey.

At around 10pm our journey was complete we had made it to Curritiba! So until next time stay safe and take care.

Adi

xx