So its been a while since we last updated you, and its been a VERY hectic one, but fab all the same...... where to start?!! from floronapolis of brazil, we travelled (together still i hasten to add!) north to Curitiba, a large well developed town for a couple of days.not as much interest there as other places but interesting none-the- less, i.e. the public transport system is considered the best in brazil, and is also one of the cleanest too. more interesting was our first brazilian friend who worked in the media called raphael-legend! thanks for all your help! from here we took another bus journey to the famous party city of rio de janeiro. what a place!! not massively impressed at first, especially as we took our taxi ride from the bus station to the hostel. there were favelas (basically massive slums!) all the way in, so we were slightly concerned to say ther least! As we extended into our six day visit however it was great. We stayed in ipenema, the more upmarket disrict and very safe, and right next to the gorgeous beach, regarded as the best in rio. We visited the famous Copacabana beach, but to us anyway, did not live up to the hype, but still pretty impressive! First day was spent adjusting to the area, and starting work on the suntan, and dont worry parents the lotion has been an extensive companion. It is so unbelievably hot! The day after was spent trekking through the largest urban forest to reach Pedra Bonita where you are able to get a great sight of rio from above. However our good luck keeps on avoiding us, just as we end up sitting next to a baby on a night bus every time, we ended up in a cloud and could not see a thing! The trekking in this kind of jungle environment made up for it tho, even though claire ended up on her ass most of the time whilst knocking over our fellow aussie companion up in front! The next few days were spent on the beach and visiting downtown where we got to see some of the churches, business districts and real brazilian culture. The evenings by now were spent with a large group of friends we had met, ranging from sweedish, australian, spanish, and of course the english. The evenings became a bit more eventful! The first night out we went to Lapa (a district) considered the best place to party with bars falling onto the streets, but it was rained off and we ended up by luck in this amazing samba club-real original stuff, no tourist place. Apart from the chilled out drinking there was St.Patricks day which involved a lot of drinking in shananigans, an irish bar-obviously, a car crash in a taxi, and kinda being ripped off in the club that we ended up in to until 5.30! really good nite, the only thing about this place which you have to watch is 'tourist tax'! One of the last evenings was halifaxatious (really good) too, we went on an organised trip, which many people do, to 'maracana', the largest footy stadium in the world, where we saw the local derby between flamengo and vasco de gama. The fans and atmoshere is mental, ended 2.1, but what overshadowed it was the riot on the field, 20 minute knockout between the players, military police, referees, and camera crew. Shocking! the boys out there would of loved it!! even claire has now become a football fan!! Weve met some real cool people and have ended up travelling along with them for a while. with our great tans intact- both of us really brown-35 dgree heat is standard! We headed south again and got a boat out to this paradise island 2 hours of the coast of brazil that all travellers rave about called Ille Grande. It has no transport, just a town full of locals and backpackers. we trecked with two others- friends Nick and jodie-through this incredible forest/jungle in search of apparantly the beat beach in brazil named lopes mendez. before reaching it we fell upon 3 other beaches which were just as worthy of such a title but once we reached this beach it was unbelievable.dont think you could quite understand how beautiful this place was without being there! Again, the photos woint do it justice! It was in the middle of nowhere too, only a few other travellers on this miles of beach, and no other way of getting there...no roads, not even boats take you to that beach so it was pretty special and quite an achievment, especially in the heat!. oh yeah, we also befriended a dog on the way through the forest who walked with us for about 2 hours and showed us the way to the beach! was really cute. He then proceeded to spend the rest of the day sunbathing on the beach with us and even caught the boat home with us too!! Stayed there for two nites under an amazing blanket of stars (claire saw 2 shooting stars and dan saw none!), and then cought a local boat back last nite and have now just arrived in sao paulo bus station where we are taking a taxi to the airport to catch a flight to peru early tomorrow morning. should mention here however that the last 24 hour have been very stressful as we missed our original flight to peru this morning because it took longer to get to sao paulo than we thought, and the bus broke down at 4 am this morning! great! Will be sleeping in the airport tonight waiting for our flight. we have decided to stay away from sao paulo itself as we have heard so many stories of muggings and danger, so like many people we are giving it a miss! So, think of us as we live in a airport tonight. We will think of you in the cold in England! We will be back soon with our travel stories in Peru and a report on the fab Machu Picchu! Sorry we havent updated you for a while, but were still having a fab time! Love to you all, as always. miss you all lots. xxxxxxxxxx