Hi everyone! Here it is...our last postcard from Brazil! Friday morning saw us back on the road and on our way to another island - this time our destination was Ilha Do Mel. After checking in to our beachfront hostel, we set to on what has become one of our favourite island activities and went for a long walk down the beach. This kept us busy most of the afternoon. In the evening, we found (easily...the island was small) a lovely restaurant overl...

Hi everyone! Welcome to our penultimate postcard from Brazil. When we last wrote, we were sheltering from the rain on Ilha Grande. Fortunately, it didn't last long and we spent our last day on another boat trip - this time to Lagoa Azul (the Blue Lagoon...though it bore no resemblance to that in the film and our verdict was that it was more green than blue!) After a pleasant day beach hopping, we returned to find the whole town was without electricity d...

Hi everyone! We ended our last postcard referring to our "hard day on the road and sea - tropical island here we come!" - that'll teach us to be sarcastic! The journey to and arrival on said tropical island proved to be more stressful than we had imagined. Traffic jams outside Rio meant a 2 hour bus trip actually took 4 hours, leaving us very little time to get the once-a-day ferry. Despite our valiant attempt to rush across town with our knapsacks on our ba...

Hi everyone, Still in Rio, leaving tomorrow morning so we thought we'd update you on our last few fun-filled days here to bring a little sunshine to your monday morning! Friday was the official start of Carnaval. It kicked off with a bloco (street parade) through the steep cobbled (wet and slippery - it had rained all day) streets of Santa Teresa. We lined up ready for the start at the published time of 4pm which in Brazil means 5 ... or 6 .... or 7 ......

Hi everyone! Good to know you have logged on to see what we're up to! Anyway, as you will have guessed we arrived safely. The flight was better than expected as we both got a decent amount of sleep - there were no screaming kids to keep us awake on the plane - in fact about 80% of the passengers were 18-35 yr olds heading for Carnaval! We arrived at our hostel in Ipanema around lunchtime yesterday and spent the afternoon exploring the area (whic...