Slept reasonably well on the night bus despite going downhill, at speed, and very very bendy for hours. I had the most testing toilet challenge of my trip - literally falling from one side of the cabin to the other. I had hoped to brush my teeth, but that was too ambitious. Rest of the day was spent on the bus through the arid interior. The landscape got more lush and with dramatic rock formations as we proceeded to the coast, and there were horses scattered eve...

We left Ouro Preto exactly as we found it - with a cup of coffee and coxinha at the bus station. The bus to Belo Horizonte was pretty straight forward, and we arrived atthe rodoviaria just about on time and with high spirits. We had about an hour to wait for our connecting bus to Salvador and so I stayed with the bags while Alex went in search of a supermarket and snacks for our journey. During my wait I encountered a little old man who sat next to me and starte...

Arrived at Ouro Preto around 6:30am, and knowing that our small hostel would not be open until at least 8am we sat at the bus station and enjoyed coffee and breakfast - I had an amazing soy ball thing which was full of cheese and chicken! We then walked down into town along the cobbled, steep streets towards our hostel, stopping at a few huge baroque churches on the way. The weather was just coming nice and the town was so peaceful at this time of day. We were st...

The bus to Rio left at 9pm (Eastern time) and I slept amazingly well, except for one time in the night when a rather nice looking military policeman boarded our bus and apparently spent a good few minutes trying to wake Alex up, who was then instructed to wake me up... again taking another few minutes. By the time we were awake the guy across the aisle was in hysterics, and amazingly everyone else in the bus seemed to be wide awake, chairs upright and lights on! ...

We arrived in Campo Grande 2 hours ahead of schedule (6:30 local time, 7:30 Iguacu time), so it was pretty lucky that Alex happened to be awake and a sign saying the name of the city happened to be outside the window. I took some waking, but we made it off the bus in time. At the station there was a woman from another tour group to what we were using who happened to know I was called Hebecca (Portuguese accent), who turned out to be friends with Gil - the man we ...