3 weeks in and our time in Brazil is nearly up. We are going to the Iguaçu falls tomorrow then on to Argentina. The last 3 weeks have been brilliant but this is where we are truely off on our own.

We haven´t really had internet access since we left, and we still can´t upload any photos but soon hopefully we will. I have filled up 2GBs already.

Week 1 was spent with Emma´s great uncle and his wife. They are both in their late 70s. He used to work for Price Water House Coopers in Rio. They have lived in Brazil for 50 odd years but have still kept their Britishness! We drank so much tea. They were lovelly and really looked after us. It was a real home from home just with a beach 100m down the road. To get to them it had taken 19 hours on a plane and then a taxi before they picked us up and drove us the last hour or so.

It took us the whole week there to recover from the frantic packing and preparations. Dennis taught me how to make a real Caiprinha and we had a mixture of traditional Brazilian food and English meals. It was from here in Ubatuba that we sent our first postcards.

We set off late on the Friday night to get an overnight bus to Rio to then fly up to the Amazon. 6 hours it took (all of which Emma spent sitting in something distinctly like sick)!

The Amazon was amazing. I´ve never been anywhere like it. The lodge we stayed at was right at the edge of the jungle and had Tu-cans, parrots, snakes and spiders just hanging around the place. The first thing we did there was to spend an hour at dusk in the jungle hunting spiders with torches! Not Emma´s idea of fun but she survived it and eventually came to quite like Tarantulas! She even called them beautiful.

We were cooked for everyday with breakfast at 7:30am! It was good food though and we were able to have beer and caiprinhas at the end of each day.

We spent a whole day on the Amazon where we saw dolphins, sloths, an iguana up a tree, 100s of birds, went piranha fishing, and Caiman spotting. Our guide even caught a baby one. The first of some once in a life time things we´ve done already.

We trekked through the jungle a number of times, even staying over night once in a hammock. On this night trek we had to walk over one of only 2 deadly spiders to humans, the Brazilan Wandering Spider! Not the answer to a good nights sleep. it was thought the frogs that kept us awake. They were so loud all night.

There are so many things we saw the list could go on but the Harp Eagle was a highlight. Its endangered apparently and not many people get to see it.

After a week in the Amazon we flew to Rio after seeing the meeting of the waters of course.

We´d managed to organise staying with Emma´s great uncles, adopted son! Very random but he was great. He lives with his girlfriend Isabella, his two children Raphael (4) and Giulia (2) as well as his mother in law Ivani. They live in an appartment in Humaita/Botafogo, about 10 minutes drive from Copacabana. The huge Jesus statue, Christ the Redeemer, can be seen while sitting on the sofa in their living room! We kept finding ourselves looking out on it as if we couldn~t belive we were really there.

Now Valerijo is my sort of guy...hes on the board for his favorite team, Vasco de Gama. And that means he has good contacts, which leads to tickets! He took us to see Vasco v Botafogo at the Maracana stadium. What an atmosphere! and the tactics just seemed to be atack, attack, attack which makes for very entertaining football. Just as we sat down a centre back for Botofogo scored with one touch from 35 yards with his left foot! Ridiculous! It finished 3-2 to Botofogo but only because the ref was terrible and gave a penalty in the last minute. Valerijo translated the fans chant as ´We are going to kill you!´ I´d be inclined to believe them too!

Rio was actually a lot less scary than we thought it was going to be. We had to be careful of course but there was no obvious danger. The Favellas, slum areas, are everywhere but 95% of them are people just trying to make a living, it is the other 5% who are into drugs and crime who give the city a bad name.

The carnaval was fantastic. Another once in alife time thing. We got there at 7pm after Ivani took us all the way there to make sure we got in ok and found it. We didn´t leave until nearly 4am. The music and the floats and the thousands of people participating meant there was no chance for boredom. The costumes and the colours, i´ve never seen anything like it. Our favourite Samba school was Potela, you should look them up on the internet. You tube often has videos from it. And again hopefully we´ll get photos up soon.

I´ll speed up a bit now because it´s late here and we´ve spent 22hours on a bus so need a good nights sleep.

We went up the Sugar loaf mountain, had a bbq with Valerijo and his friends, and went to a kids carnival parade which were all good fun. Then on the day we were leaving, that´s yesterday now blimey! Valerijo met up with a friend at the base of one of the Favellas. We went for a drink, then 16 bottles later he had been talked in to driving into the Favella to show us somewhere tourists never see!

This was also a first for him and he spent the whole time saying, ´now this is cool, this is really cool!´The night before we had watched a film in Portugese called Elite Troop which was all about the police going into slums and killing drug dealers, so we had these images of kids with machine guns, and its true!´

I saw two kids dancing in the street with big machine guns in hand, they must have been about 16. Then around the corner was a 12 year old with a pistol strapped to his thigh! All very casual. Valerijo´s friend knew everyone it seemed. His brother owned a video shop so we stopped and he bought us Elite Troop! It was so surreal that we were crusing around a Favella, then he said the road we were on now is one of the most dangerous roads in Rio because the police and drug gangs often clash there! Blood pressure went up but there was no sign of trouble. We ended up going for a beer just round the corner. We got back to Valerijo´s with about 15mins to pack and get to the bus station which was very stressful but we made it, and now we are here in our last Brazilian town before crossing to Argentina.

I hope everyone at home is doing ok. We´ve had a mixture of 35C perfect sunny days, and hot muggy, torential rainy days. It hasn´t stopped us having a great time. We´ve seen and experienced so much already and we´ve hardly touched the surface.

Lots of love,

Craig and Emma xXx