I left Rio on the 7th with the tour group I joined up with after carnival and am definitely back in traveller mode again as I have absolutely no idea what day of the week it is. We have moved our way north and west to Brasil's interior slowly (underpowered truck) via numerous places which I will talk briefly about in a minute but first I thought it would be good to give you a run down on my fellow travellers on this tour: England 1. M, 27, good at football, writes a travel blog, handsome. 2. M, 50, Cornish fisherman, mumbles a lot and thinks making funny noises is amusing. 3. F, late 30's, looks like a little boy, smokes loads, takes 2.5 sugars in her coffee. 4. F, 29, Dietician by trade, no annoying habits and seems nice. 5. M, mid 30's, essex wideboy salesman, booked the trip on a whim after selling his house and getting his divorce papers through from Mexico (he married on a whim while on holiday in Mexico once). very funny bloke. 6. M, 68, old, retired and now goes on holiday all the time. 7 8. Couple, late 20's, both probably didn't have that many friends at school. 9. M, early 50's, big gut, makes tennis courts, good natured but a bit simple. Denmark 1 2. Honeymooning couple, mid 20's, girl is a bit of character and very funny, I get on well with the bloke but he eats more and walks faster than me making me feel rather inadequate (these are the only two things I have a real talent for). 3. M, 24, my roommate, good bloke, does stuff with iron for a living, bares more than a passing resemblence to former Danish international midfielder Thomas Graversen: http://www.toffeeweb.com/images/players/profiles/gravesen.jpg Canada 1 2. Couple, early 60's, hunt mooses in the summer, go on overland tours in the winter. 3. M, 47, teacher, has a voice almost identical to Mr Smithers from the Simpsons (I have told him this yet, not sure how he'll take it) but seems a good guy. 4. M, late 40's, very rural type who tends a golf course for a living, doesn't seem particularly comfortable with urban areas and heat. South Africa 1. F, early 30's, doing the full loop of south america in the truck. Australia 1. M, 28, generic aussie bloke, is one of our two guides. 2. F, mid 40's, sharp witted and takes the piss out of me a bit. Switzerland 1. F, late 30's, the second of the two guides, drives slow but does organise a lot for us. First stop on the tour was an old colonial town called Ouro Preto. This involved a full day's drive north from Rio after an early start. The town grew in the early 18th century when some bloke found a load of gold there. Apparently some of the early people that went there were so hell bent of gathering gold that they forgot to find food and starved to death with gold nuggets in their pockets! The town was very beautiful and due to its impressive colonial architecture has UNESCO world heritage status. This, among other things, means that the residents get funding to maintain the facades of their houses (but not the backs!) to a high standard and it limits any modern development in the town. With a population of only 68,000 and much more of a sleepy feel it was a real stark contrast to Rio. We checked in to, and took over, a youth hostel in the town with an excellent view across the town centre and this was to be our base for our 3 days here. The first day we all went on mass for a tour of one of the many gold mines in the area. You went down 125m down a mine shaft in one of these little trollies and a brasilian guy gave us a pretty poor tour and showed us the underground lake. The next day a few of us hired a local guide to take us on a hike around the hills. He took us to this waterfall cave which was pretty good and this rock that was shaped like an alligator's head that stuck out a cliff face which you could stand on for a photo. As we'd finished by lunchtime myself and Denmark (less Denmark female) decided we hadn't had enough walking for the day and wanted to scale the highest peak in the area. The guide stuck the three of us on a bus to the entrance of the national park that allegedly the peak was accessible from but we got a bit lost and went up another hill instead. We must have covered a huge number of miles as both the Danish were ex-military and both outrageously fit so it was like being on a march rather than a relaxing amble through the hills. After Ouro Preto we continued our drive north towards the capital Brasilia. It was too far to go in one day so we had our first 'bush camp' of the trip. A bush camp involves turning off the road and trying to find some flat, dry land that isn't fenced off or covered in jungle (not all that easy) but we managed it just before the light faded.

The next day we hit Brasilia, which on arrival is like falling into a science-fiction novel. The city has a space age feel to it with a kind of communist retro twist. It was built in just 3 years at the end of the 1950's by the government who decided to move the capital from Rio. The president at the time enlisted Brazil's top architects, designers, and urban planners to come up with a futuristic style city. The result was many strangely shaped public buildings, wide open spaces, tower blocks, and when seen from the sky - a bird shaped outline (apparently it looks bizarre on google earth). We were only here one night as once you've been up the tv tower and looked at a couple of the weird cathedrals there is little to interest the tourist. Also the city is huge and spaced out which makes it difficult for the pedestrian and not something I liked very much. Just before leaving Brasilia I bumped in to Mathias the german from the Rio language school randomly in the street. He had just fled Rio after getting robbed on the beach and losing his camera and credit card (he was distracted by a black man asking him for sunscreen, he realised afterwards he was a little silly not to be suspicious of this), this together with some other tales of thievery suggest that I was lucky to escape Rio without incident.

Next on the agenda after Brasilia was the Parque Nacional Chapada dos Veadeiros, a national park a couple of hundred kilometers north. This area is according to NASA the most luminous point on the earth's surface due to the rock crystals in the ground. They weren't hard to spot, pretty much the whole place was covered in quartz. The clear quartz looked like broken glass and was mined extensively before the area was made a national park in 1980. We had 3 full days here where we camped and did a number of hikes out to some impressive waterfalls and pools in lunar like rock formations (the rock was almost identical to the fake rock they have at theme parks). One of the days myself, Denmark, and Ken the cornish fisherman hired a guide called 'The Caveman' to take us on a hike up the highest hill in the area. I was umming and ahhing about whether to bother doing the hike but when I heard someone called the Caveman was taking us, I was definitely in. The Caveman's cousin also tagged along, he didn't look too disimilar but he wore sunglasses which obviously was the reason he hadn't acquired the same nickname. The hike was quite tough as the hill wasn't often climbed and therefore had no discernable path, meaning we had to clamber over some sizable rocks to reach the top. The views we well worth it though and you could see so far I'm sure I could make out the west coast of africa from the top.

Post national park we headed on the mamouth journey west to the city Cuiaba from where I write. There is nothing really here but we are overnighting here before heading in to the Pantanal region tomorrow morning. This is a huge area of swamp land half the size of France shared with Bolivia and Paraguay. It is known for its wildlife and is supposed to be better for wildlife viewing than the amazon jungle (less plants and trees in the way). Hoping to see some jaguars, alligators and birds but at this time of year the horror stories we've heard suggest these may be outnumbered 10 billion to one by mosquitoes. I'll give you the mosquito bite count on the next blog.....