Our first day in Salvador, the capital of Bahia (Brazils African state), was spent exploring the old centre of the city seeing the cathedral, a palace, a church built by slaves and a number of other old colonial buildings. The area was full of bright colourful buildings, some of which have been beautifully restored to their former glory and some which have unfortunately been left to rot. While walking around we also saw a number of Bahian women in traditional afr...

We arrived in the seaside town of Buzios on Saturday afternoon and checked straight into our hostel which turned out to be the nicest place we have stayed. Thanks to them not recieving our online booking we were upgraded to a double room from a dorm for free! Tim soon found a new best friend in Shoyu, the hostel dog. That evening we had a walk around the town and the beautiful harbour. The next day we walked along the coast to sunbathe and swim at a nice little ...

During our 3 weeks in Rio we decided to have a short break and head to Ilha Grande, a tropical island just South West of Rio. Despite the bad weather we had on our bus and ferry from Rio to Ilha Grande the island made a great first impression on us as we sailed past numerous other tropical islands and into the main bay of Ilha Grande. No vehicles are allowed on the island with the exception of one community tractor, giving the whole place a calm and remote feel t...

We arrived in Rio at around 7pm and within an hour were on our way out to see a Brazilian football match at Rio´s main stadium, the Maracana. It was a great introduction to the city and we got to know other people from the hostel very quickly. The game was great fun (even Ashley enjoyed it!) but the atmosphere was amazing with the stadium being just short of its 120,000 capacity! We watched the majority of the game from just behind the advertising boards among a...

We arrived in Foz do Iguaçu at around midday but unfortunately had forgotten to make a note of the name and address of the hostel we had booked, which resulted in us having to walk around town with our backpacks to find an ATM and then an internet cafe - not a great start! When we finally reached the hostel we were so exhausted that we fell asleep for a couple of hours. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and exploring some of the town before ahvnig an early n...