It´s been quite a while since I last wrote a blog but everything is going really well. I´m loving being on the tour, it´s so nice to be around other people too and we´ve had loads of fun. I was in Paraty the last time I wrote which was a really nice town. We left there on Thursday 10th and got a bus to Sao Paulo and had a couple of hours there. It was such a horrible city and it´s so dangerous too so we just went to a cool food market in the centre and got dinner before getting on the night bus to Iguazu falls. Everything was so run down there so we weren´t sad to have only had a couple of hours there!

We arrived in Iguazu on Friday 11th in the morning and checked in to a really nice hotel and went to a buffet lunch place. Brazilians love their buffets, they´re everywhere and you pay by the weight which is quite good! In the afternoon we explored the Brazilian side of Iguazu falls which was so beautiful. There was a walkway along the side which took an hour and a half and part of it goes right out over the water so we got soaked! The sheer force of the water makes such a loud noise and there is so much spray in the air! That evening we went to a house party and had a bbq there which was really fun, there was another tour group there so was really nice to meet them all.

We didn´t do that much on Saturday 12th. We watched to first England game which was in the afternoon at a bar and jsut all played cards in the evening after dinner. Last Sunday was one of the best days of the entire trip! We went to the Argentinian side of the falls which was 100 times more impressive than the Brazilian side! We got another Argentinian stamp on our passport and then started at the least impressive, baby waterfalls there so that the day kept getting better and better! It´s set up for tourists there and in the summer it´s aparently impossible to move and take good pictures as there are thousands and thousands of people there everyday so we were lucky it was the quieter time of year! We walked for half an hour on a walkway at the top of the falls and tool some great photos and then went on a big jeep through the national park area until we got to where the boat trip went from. It was sooo fun, we went out on this big speed boat and took our clothes off so we just had bikins and our waterproofs, which was kind of pointless lol, and went so close to one of the biggest waterfalls there. We got absolutely soaked and looked liked we´d just had a shower but it was so fun! the spray is just crazy so we could hardly see anything when we were nearly under it! We went and changed and sat in the sun to have lunch before getting a little train to a waterfall called ´The Devil´s Throat´. We walked for a kilometer on a walkway over the tranquil water at the top which is really vast and so surprisingly calm until we got to it. It was without a doubt the most incredible thing I have ever seen, just breath-taking! A huge crater just appears in this tranquil water where 1million cm cubed of water falls every second!!!! I can´t even describe how m assive it was. You can´t see very far in to the crater because of all of the mist, but the force of it was unbelievable! They´re trying to get it recognised as one of the natural wonders of the world! That evening we had to get another night bus to Bonito.

We arrived in Bonito last Monday morning. The last 2-3 hours of the journey was on this one straight road with the same scenery! Really made me realise how vasr Brazil is! There were just huge farms and then Bonito is the only town for miles! It was really green and so flat so it didn´t seem dissimilar to alot of places in the world but there was so many turmite mounds all over the fields! That day everyone went snorkelling but it was really expensive and I´ve done amazing snorkelling in Thailand and Malaysia so I wasn´t too worried, so I sat in the sun for a few hours which was so nice. It was actually really warm so Igot a nice tan again!

Last Tuesday we all went to this lake called Baneira del Sol and played lots of vollyball, sunbathed and had a bbq. It was such a fun day, we all get on really well, there are a couple of odd ones but I get on so well with Chris and Teresa who are both 24 from Cambridge. Leon, our guide, is always really fun and thinks of things to do all the time! He´s a big kid really and needs to use up all of his hyperactive energy lol! We went for açai which is Brazil´s national berry. They freeze the berrys and then blend them up in to a sorbet kind of thing and then serve it with sliced banana, granola and honey, was really nice!

We got a bus to the Pantanal last Wednesday.We drove for 5 hours down a dirt track to a farm, so it was literally in the middle of nowhere in the midle of South America, which was really cool! There wasn´t a town for 130km! we arrived when it was dark but met the other tour group that were there and had dinner and drinks with them. There was crazy amounts of mosquitoes so the bug spray definitely came out!

Everyone woke up on Thursday having not slept very well as we all slept in hammocks in a big barn. We went piranha fishing in the morning for 4 hours which was very unsuccesful. Aparently there are usually so many but our group only managed to get one! We had bamboo rods and put meat on the hooks and had to stand above our knees in water and it was so sunny so we topped up the tans some more! We went back for lunch and then went horse riding through the wetlands for 3 hours in the afternoon which was so cool. It was just walking pace and following each other but we saw lots of toucans and other birds. The other group managed to catch loads of piranhas so we had them for dinner with rice and beans, it was such nice fish!

On Friday morning our group went for a nature walk in the pantanal. One of the guys who lives on the farm took us and half of the time we were wading through water with squelchy mud at the bottom so that was quite gross lol. We saw lots of cayman alligators and so many other animals. We got back and got a private mini bus to the Bolivian boarder which was the start of a 2 day crisis! We exited Brazil fine and then tried to get a stamp in to Bolivia but no one was there. We walked over and waited for a bit but everyone kept saying it was closed as it was a public holday. We had to get on our night train to Santa Cruz so we got on that and hoped we´d be able to go to the immigration office there to sort it.

We arrived in Santa Cruz on Saturday morning after the bumpiest train ride ever! I´ve got a huge bruise on my arm from it hitting the arm of my chair all night when I was asleep lol! It felt like it was going to tip off the tracks! We got in rally car taxis - they were so bashed around and the steering wheel had been switched from the right to the left! We met for lunch at a really nice cafe which you wouldn´t expect in Bolivia, everything came to 2 pounds! We then went to the immigration office which was closed as it was the weekend but there were people there. Leon spoke to the manager but he wasn´t having any of it, he almost accepted a bribe to just stamp our passports but then completely turned and got really angry saying that if we didn´t leave then he would call the police! So that didn´t work! We decided to try again at the airport the next day and walked around the town for a bit in the afternoon. It was really clean and there were some really nice buildings, really not what I thought Bolivia would be like! We went to a Bolivian steak bbq restaurant for dinner and then to a few bars that evening.

On Sunday we got a flight to Sucre which took 25 minutes! When we´d checked in we went to immigration there to try and get stamps. Leon troed his best to explain everything that had happened but they teamed up and supported the boarder people who said it was open! He got interrogated by the cheif of police there and was told that we would all be arrested if we didn´t pay a 30 pound fine each! It was so unfair but we didn´t have a choice at all, so we finally got our Bolivian stamp which was the main thing! The two Suisse girls left us and three more joined us on the plane - a 21 year old English guy, a 31 year old canadian girl and a canadian guy in his 50s. We checked in to such a nice hotel and went for dinner all together.

Today Jo, Tim (the German guy), Teresa, Chris and I walked around Sucre. We went to the market and I got an alpaca jumper and some alpaca socks so I should be warm in the salt flats! It´s a reall nice town, so clean again and lovely buildings. It´s really funny to see older men and women in traditionally Bolivian dress, they´rea ll so small! We´re going for a drink before dinner with Leon and then meeting the others who have been on a hike all day for dinner. We´ve got such a good week ahead of us in Bolivia, so will write another blog when we get to La Paz!