Alright Folks, We are now in Salvador after spending the last two weeks in Rio for Carnival. We decided to travel up there ahead of the tour to give us an extra three days so that we could do all the sight seeing without the massive crowds. All the tour companies got into Rio at the same time for four or five days. Our tour company had 800 people in Rio and so we thought it would be better to get there a few days early before the mad rush to see everything. We also had two other reason to get there early; I needed to get a Colombian Consulate to have an interview and process a visa to get into the country (more about that in a bit); and the camp site we were meant to be staying in in Paraty only had three male toilets and six femlae toilets between 300+ people. Needless to say we got into Paraty at 1pm and we on the 7pm bus outta there! I feel a bit of backgound is needed to fully understand the Colombian visa situation. Before we left the UK I asked our travel agent on many occasions if we needed any visa's to visit any of the countyies that we were visiting and she told me that we were both fine. As Sharlene was going to travel on her UK passsport she did not have to get any compared to if she used her NZ one. Sharlene also checked with a specific visa company and they again said that we were both okay to travel without prior visa's. When we arrived in Quito, you remember, all the way back in November. We spoke to other travellers and the visa question came up. Some were told the same info but others had in fact gotton visa's for Venezuela. Upon further investigation we found out that we do in fact need a visa for Venezuela as we are travelling overland rather than flying and they therefore need a visa to show our entry and exit dates. As we are not the only ones in this situation our new tour leader (Truman - a decent stand up bloke who is very organised) is going to sort it all for us. Woopee i hear you say - not yet though! Upon our investigations into the real visa situation i found out that i need one for Bolivia and Colombia. At that point Bolivia was not a problem as we had already gone though it! Good ol' South American laziness got me through that one but Colombia was proving to be a bit more of a hassle. A few years ago three Irish guys (from the IRA) were caught training the local terrorist groups and were jailed and subsquently escaped back to Ireland. This has put Ireland in a bit of a difficult position as Colombia as no extradiction laws and so can't ask for them back. Therefore they have decided that any Irish wanting to visit their fair land jump though a large number of hoops. Just trying to get in contact with the Embassies was near impossible. After loads of emails to non active email address and zillions of attempts to non existant numbers (Brasil has the weirdest phone system in the world, loads of area codes and regionl codes) we dedided that with an address of a Consulate in Rio we would just head up there. Great, finally back to the point. So when we arrived in Rio we hopped in a cab and zoomed (Arton Senna is very much alive in spirit in all cabbies in Rio) down to the address we had. Guess what, the bloody thing closed down three years previous and is now a British Embassy. You could imagine the naughty words that came out of my mouth. So off to the internet we went to try yet another search for a Colombian Consulate in Brasil. I than decided to contact the Irish embassy, and only than did we get a worth while respone to all our searches. Current situation is this; I need to fill in the usual forms and give them loads of pics of me (well I am a good lookin'guy), supply them with finanical statements, lists of hotels, and just to completelty screw me over i need to do all of this in person and attend an interview at the same time and everything has to be translatedinto Spanish and the interview is, you guessed it, in Spanish. So at this point we are looking into staying an extra two weeks in Venezuela and doing a lot of things that actually want to do. So, thanks to the IRA, the Colombian Government, the Brasilian telephone system, and my lack of Spanish we may actually get to do a whole load of things we really like. Wow, i feel exhausted resighting all of that. So back to Rio and Carnival. This was meant to be a high point for both of us and we were quiet dissapointed by it. We expected parties everywhere with dancing on the streets everywhere you went and a none stop feeling of bliss. However, when we got there you would swear that Carnival was the best kept secret and only we knew about it. Other than spending some time looking for the Colombians, we visit Sugar Loaf Mountain, Copacabana beach, and Christ the Redeemer. We did both Sugar Loaf and Christ at sun set on different nights and the views were really pretty (check out the pics). Christ was not as big as we expected and fairly far out of town. Although we could see it from our room on the 12th floor i could not capture it on camera, we could also see Sugar Loaf from our room. For those of you that have been to Rio and know that they are on opposite sides of the city we stayed on both sides of the hotel during our stay. Copacabana was also empty, we woundered how all those photographers got it looking so busy. I guess they all desecding on it for one day and pistures of each other on it!! The one day we spent there we soon realised that we were on the gay section. Not only due to the gay pride flags but due to the lack of women in thongs and the abudance of men in thongs! There were also alot of he/she's. The law says that topless sunbathing is illegal for women, so when you see a 'women' sunbathing topless it is most likely a post op man. That will teach any bloke for having a sneeky peek! I also have some cool tan lines thanks to the eractic nature of my lotion-putter-onner. She will so kill me when she reads that. Just to get myself out of trouble, it was my fault as i didn't do all of my front and so when Sharlene did my sides i have hand prints all down one side and what looks like a funky birth make on the other. Other than the main sites we went to the Sambadrome and saw the Special Group compete (the top 7 Samba Schools in the city) on the Sunday. Thanks to Tucan for getting us the s***ist seats. No word of a lie we got the worst seats available. Before we got the tickets we had been into a tourist office to find out the programme of the competition and we were told that section 6 and 13 were the worst as you could see anything until the School was in front of you to the distance of these sections from the main causeway. Section 6 was a good 50 metres behind all the others and so we had no view to the left. So when we got our tickets and saw that we wre in Section 6 I went though Kirsty for the last time. When we got to the Sambadrome we sat and waited about 30-40 minutes to see the first school and after that we waited for the second school. Just as we were watching the second school the heavens opened. God was telling us to go back to the hotel and get out of the rain. Who were we to disagree with God. While walking back with got slightly lost for about 10 minutes got totally drenched but got back in the end. I have just realised that most of you have no mental picture of what i am talking about. The Sambadrome is a street that was specially converted with Terrace seating either side of the road. It takes about 80 minutes for the school to get from one end to the other. Section 6 is at the end and recessed about 50 metres from the road so your view to the left is restricted until the school get right in front of you and by this stage they have passed the judges and are right at the end. The drummers have left also and most of the dancers are tired so that is why this section is crap. We at least only paid 30USD for the seats. Some of our fellow passengers were charged 135USD for VIP tickets. This meant that they got a assigned seat at the fron of the crap section. Needless to say they were fuming. Kirsty had a bad day that day. Christ this is like a chapter from a boring autobiography. Maybe i should try a bit of Jackie Collins and spice it up with some scandel and sex! Interestingly enough the next thing we saw was the Richest Church in Brazil, there is no subject more riddled with sex and scandel than the Catholic Church. How's about that for a good link... Maybe not what you wanted, but we have parents reading this so the censorship commitee have ruled me out on this one. Anyway, i think thats about it, not like i could get anymore in. If you do manage to read all of this a will buy you a drink when i return. For those in the UK you will have to just buy your own. Until next time, Em & S.