We left Michaels house at 11.00 am local time on Friday and after 3 planes, one car journey and one local bus we arrived at our hostel 8.30pm local time on Saturday. Including the time difference 38 hours on the go (24 hours in the air...). Exhausted is an understatement.

Our journey...

First we flew just over an hour from Durban to Johannesburg. This left us with a few hours in the airport where we spent our time in the bar (naturally). Next, was the 8 hour flight to Dubai.
We like flying long haul. Though it was a night flight that didn't stop us pressing the buzzer every 30 minutes (a trick we learnt from flying in India) to order our fair share of complimentary free drinks. Not just enough to send us into a peaceful sleep, but enough for us to watch 3 films in a row, followed by us dancing in our seats at 4am to the fantastic Motown playlist Claire managed to find on the inflight entertainment system. We had about 20 minutes sleep before being woke up for the breakfast where apart from having a full omelette, fruit, cake and yoghurt, she also devoured 2 croissants.

In Dubai airport where we were now very tired, hungover and curled up into a ball on the cold aluminium seats in the airport we unsuccessfully attempted to sleep for a few hours before boarding our 15 hour flight to São Paulo. On this flight we started with another breakfast where Claire again not only ate all of the food she was given, but also finished off 3 more croissants. It was on this flight where we also remembered that we were now on a very strict budget and so every hour we would order a double vodka (which they would serve in miniature bottles). However, rather than drinking these, we stashed them. Lots of them. We soon realised that we could also help ourselves to free chocolate bars, free snack bars, free fruit and other delicious snacks. So we did, and we stashed these too. Once we landed in São Paulo we left the plane with hand luggage weighing twice as much as when we boarded containing enough food to feed us for the next two days and enough vodka to host a party. Thank you Emirates.

São Paulo

With a population of 19 million! São Paulo is the biggest city in the Southern Hemisphere. You would think there is a lot to see, but actually there isn't...

We never wanted to visit São Paulo. It doesn't really house anything particularly interesting, and apart from being very expensive, it has a reputation of being one of the most dangerous cities in the world. But, on a brighter note it was £20 cheaper to fly there, hence this is where we arrived.
From the airport and clutching onto our bags with our dear lives we caught the local bus through the city. We were stopping in Vila Mariana, an old colonial area that was quiet and very portuguesey. The hostel though a little quiet was nice, friendly and a great place to catch up on some much needed sleep. Saying that, we weren't as tired as we feared so we managed to have one day exploring a little bit.

Paulista Avenue

The main site of cultural centres and museums in the city. We had a little wander round. Boring.

Ibirapuera Park

Is a major urban park in the city (one of South America's largest city parks) and is often compared to that of Central Park in New York. It is not. We had an Emirate picnic here, sat under the trees watching and listening to the daily life of the Paulistanos (São Paolo people). There was a huge mix of people - skateboarders, rollerbladers, families, joggers, potheads, cyclists, snoggers and the homeless, and somewhere in the distant background there was a live band playing Samba songs. Brazilian and brilliant.

The Museum of Modern Art.

Yep you read that right. We visited our first ever art museum. That's because we have grown up and now we want to become more cultured travellers and see some of the fantastic works of art South America has to offer! Not really! We were walking past it by accident and it was free so we thought we'd give it a look.

Some exhibits included -

A room where the walls are covered with 365 shopping lists collected from London supermarkets...
A video of a blinking dot...
A room where wallpaper had been scraped off...
And a stepladder that gets moved into different positions everyday by the janitor...

Yep, weird.

So that's it for São Paulo. There's nothing wrong with it and it is much nicer than we envisioned - we didn't even see one shooting :-(. There is however not a lot to see or do making it a bit of a pointless stop in a country that has so much more to offer.


Paraty

Paraty is connected by road to Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, and so with heading up to Rio we decided to stop off. We arrived after a pleasant coach journey (compared to Asia, every bus is now pure luxury) and found our hostel. The hostel itself was great and full of lots of other travellers. It was here, where we had our first introduction to the famous Brazilian cocktail -Caipirinha. A sweet drink made from Cachaca (a sugar cane liquor), mixed with a tooth rotting amount of sugar and fresh lime. They are delicious and they went down very well. We are sure we will be enjoying a few more of these on our quick trip around a very small corner of the country.

Paraty is a preserved Portugese old colonial village renowned for its historic town, it's coastline and mountains. The main centre has cobblestone paved streets (twice the size of Corrie's cobbles) that are lethally uneven, especially when walking in flip flops. No cars or trucks are allowed in this part of town - only horses and carts. It sits on a beautiful stretch of Brazillian coast and is surrounded by golden beaches and over 50 nearby islands. It is quite beautiful. Walking through the streets gives a real sense of a time from long ago. Lots of restaurants and bars also set up tables and chairs outside which gives a very Portuguese feel to the town.

We mainly walked around the pretty old town, spending time at the beach and the port where there were lots of brightly coloured tiny boats that can be chartered to take you out to the nearby islands. We had a great day on one of these boats sailing around the islands, having a dip in the crystal clear waters and visited some of the nicest beaches we have ever seen (Brazillian beaches are definitely in competition with Asian beaches). And to make things better at the beginning of the trip we won the free raffle for a free Caipirinha!

Praia do Jabaquara was another beach just on the outskirts of the historic centre that we walked to ourselves. Again, it was stunning.

Brazil on a budget.

We came to Brazil knowing it would stretch our budget more than most places, but to be honest it hasn't been as bad as we thought. We have to be a bit realistic with something's though. For example we can only really drink at the hostels and in the happy hour we pre-order several drinks in advance. And we don't eat out. At all. We eat pasta with tomato sauce and ham. Every night. This isn't too bad an option though, as eating in the hostel does have the added bonus of reducing the risk in becoming victims of an arrastao, where armed bandits rob an entire restaurant of patrons in the blink of an eye (a disturbing trend in Brazil of late apparently). Every cloud...


Things we have learned
1 Dubai airport is rubbish
2 Qatar airlines are better than Emirates
3 It is very difficult to purchase a hoody in São Paolo - very frustrating if you left your much loved hoody in South Africa


Planes used - 10 (+3)
Buses/coaches used - 26 (+2)
Trains used - 24
Metros/subways used - 33 (+5)
Cars used - 8
Minivans - 8
Russian Campervans used -1
Horses used - 1
Camels used - 1
Taxis used - 11
Cable cars used - 1
Bicycles used- 2
Tuk tuks/autorickshaw used - 31
Scooters used - 6
Elephants used - 0
Ferrys used - 4
CycleRickshaw - 1
Bamboo HouseBoat - 1Tour Boat - 1 NE