Rio - Foz

We were up fairly early today and after showering and packing were ready to go to the bus station by 11. This proved blissfully uneventful as we were expecting trouble getting on the tube with our backpacks if it was too busy, the only factor was the heat, it was another scorching hot day and we walked from the house to the metro (1km) and then from the metro to the bus station (3km) in it and as such were tired and thirsty by the time we got there. I sorted the bags out for travelling, put them in the lockable waterproof bags we have, whilst Andy went in search of drinks and when he came back we made our way to the platform to wait for the bus. It seemed there were 2 buses going to Foz and luckily we were on the one with the air conditioning which is much nicer than travelling with the windows open as much of the city smells worse than Cuba!! We departed pretty much on time and our long 22hr journey began (in the end it was 25hrs!!) on a not bad but not fantastic bus, it had those seats that although they recline a long way and you've got plenty of space, still seem to manage to make your back ache after 10 minutes sitting in them. For the first time there were no films played (violent or otherwise) even though there were the usual tv sets aboard. The only interesting thing that happened was at the rest stops where they have the most ridiculous system whereby you are supposed to walk to the far end of the building to be handed an electronic card thing before having to wind your way through the restaurant trying to pass people getting food until you can reach the back of where we wanted to be, the shop!! We didnt even know you had to do this and had slipped in the shop at the front through an empty checkout and had people jabber at us to go round, which we ignored, until they came and gave us these electronic ticket things each which we clearly weren't going to use, you are meant to put your food from the restaurant on it like a tab then queue up in the shop afterwards to pay, what a bloody faff and typical of some of the enforced stupidity we have found in Brasil. Whether this is to stop people stealing (the second one we stopped at had paper tick lists instead which you could easily have screwed up instead of paying!) or whether it is just to create jobs we dont know but there are many things like this we have come across whilst in Brasil and have come to the conclusion that although an interesting, beautiful and varied country, it is not one of our favourites due to the amount of times it has annoyed us with theses things that dont make any sense!! Ok, rant over, the scenery was beautiful as we travelled and as it got dark we listened to some of our book on the ipod before trying to get some sleep.