Typical South American shower head. Don't touch the exposed wires! generally, the less pressure you have means warmer water as it passes through the heating element slower. so hair washing usually means cold or luke warm water!

For our final week in Rio we decided to ensure that we'd fit everything on our list in, which was potentially going to difficult as the weather forecast was suggesting that it would rain for the majority of it. Saturday was to be the first nice day for the week, so we booked our Christ the Redeemer tickets for then. Then it was off to the Jardim Botânico (Botanic Gardens), as the day had slipped away from us and there wasn't much else that we could fit in for th...

The flight into Rio was beautiful. As we descended we were treated with a taste of the views that Rio has to offer. The coastline is ridiculously beautiful, with large mountains rising straight up from the ocean. The city sprawls into every available semi flat piece of ground amongst lush green forest and rocky escarpments. We already understood the name "The Marvellous City". After touching down, we took a taxi to our apartment we are staying in, only 2 blocks ...

Curitiba, pronounced by the locals as Curichiba. When we got off the plane, the first thing we did was find the tourist info, get a map, and ask how we should get to our hotel. The girl at the desk told us there was a bus that stopped at a few places around town, including the ônibus terminal, from which our hotel was directly across the street. Too easy! Upon arrival, as they were quite busy, there was no being shown to our room or explanation of breakfast or ...

Having flown in we've decided that it's quite nice to arrive somewhere only a few hours after leaving, instead of sitting on a bus for hours on end! Our host for our Porto Alegre stay, Paulo, had said to get a taxi from the airport for at about 45 Reais ($22), so we inquired at one of the taxi booths who said it would be 58 Reais eitherway, what?!? We headed to the tourist info to see about other ways of getting to town. Having already realised that Spanish does...