So after all the fuss and full-on-ness of Carnaval in Rio I've finally joined my GAP adventures group and started my tour across the countries of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. The pace of the tour started off really slowly but it was great to see some really beautiful and lesser known parts of Brazil. In the space of a week we traveled to a tropical island, saw some spectacular waterfalls and spent an afternoon fishing for Piranhas!

Ilha Grande, our first stop, was like something out of a Hollywood movie set; it was everything you would imagine a tropical island to be. Needless to say we didn't do much here apart from laze on the beach and pinch ourselves in case it wasn't real (it was really that gorgeous!). Unfortunately we did have to leave eventually and we moved onto a pretty colonial town called Paraty. Not paradise but lovely all the same. Carnaval was still going on here (do these people ever work?) so the town was buzzing with life and had some great ice cream (Ferrero Rocher flavour anyone?!). After our quick stop in Paraty we headed on out to the Brazilian side of the Iguaçu Falls. I'd been looking forward to seeing the falls and knew they would be a highlight of the tour. I haven't seen Niagara or the Victoria falls so I'm not sure how Iguaçu compares but I was definitely impressed. On the Brazilian side of the border there are hundreds and hundreds of falls which you can get up close and personal too by walking along the boardwalks out into the abyss. You also get very very wet, which was heaven seen as the humidity was about 80 per cent! The next day we traveled over the border to Argentina to see the falls from this side. The Argentian side was geared towards tourists a lot more, there was a museum and lots of activities that you could do while visiting the falls. After you've visited the falls there isn't a lot more to do in Iguaçu so we spent a frustrating day waiting around for our bus to Bonito. Not too much to see or do in Bonito either apart from snorkel! So some of us took a day trip out to a river called the Rio de Prata and spent the day snorkeling down it. The water was so clear it was like swimming in an aquarium and because the current of the water was pushing you along most of the time all you had to do was relax and swim with the fish! We also saw a little Cayman crocodile along the way too, he wasn't interested in us but it was still a bit scary being so close. It was such an exhausting but fantastic day. Bonito was our last glimpse of civilization before we went to an area of Brazil called the Pantanal. It is a really wild, deserted region and it's a bit like going on safari if you go there. We were going back to nature! So we spent 2 nights sleeping in hammocks and searching for wildlife. Unfortunately for me the wildlife also came searching for me as I got bitten to death by mossies and stung by a wasp! We spent a whole morning horse riding which I loved and a whole afternoon Piranha fishing which I hated!! Apparently Piranhas will only attack if you are gushing blood so it was perfectly safe for us to wade into a muddy, Cayman filled lake to fish for them….! (Mum, remember my face when we went searching for Alligators in Florida, well, it was worse than that this time!). I was scared stiff and all you could feel while you were knee deep in the water was little air bubbles crawling up your legs -yuk. I did manage to catch one though and as soon as I did I was out of there! How many people can say they've been fishing for Piranhas??!

Eventually we had to leave Brazil behind and we've just entered Bolivia. I'd heard lots of horror stories about Bolivia but so far I am really enjoying it here. We are in Sucre as I write and I think it's one of my favourite places so far. The people are amazingly friendly and even willing to listen to my rubbish Spanish. We also had quite an emotional day yesterday as a group of us visited two orphanages to go play with the children and give them some much needed gifts. The actual orphanages were horrendous places and heart breaking to know that those children are still there now sleeping in rooms with holes in the roofs and damp beds. Yet the children were children; mischievous, curious and in need of lots of love and I was happy to spend my time with them. I only wish I could have taken them all home with me. The government in Bolivia is so corrupt that basically they get nothing, all donations never get to them and it takes groups like GAP to physically go out and buy things for them and take them there themselves for them to receive anything. Saying that though, even though we were with GAP it was a mission trying to get us to even visit them because everything had to be approved by officials. I haven't really worked out how to deal with what I saw yet, is it just a case of that's how the world is and we can't change it? Will I remember those children when I complaining about not having this or that when I get home? All I hope is that our visit did a little to make their day brighter in a small way.

Heavy stuff! Tomorrow we're onto Potosi, the highest place in Bolivia so altitude sickness could be on the agenda. I'll look forward to letting you know all the gory details in my next blog!