Very small update as we have little access to internet. Now in Sao Paulo which is big and ugly. We are both well and Jodies´ cold is improving. Will update more when we get WiFi. ******* We left Paraty and took the bus 6 hrs south to Sao Paulo. The buses here are great. Not too expensive, on time, leave and arrive in secure locations, and have almost 'lie flat' beds. At worst they do videos……….English videos, dubbed into Portuguese with bad English s...

Paraty is indeed a beautiful colonial town, surrounded by green mountains, white beaches and clear blue seas. It is also wet. Very bloody wet. During our stay it made North Yorkshire seam like a desert, which was a tad disappointing. Luckily we had booked a fantastic guest house called the Pousada Guarana and were wonderfully looked after by David and Jimena, so didn't mind whiling away a few hours sitting on the veranda, drinking beer, reading and playing with t...

We are now out of Rio and in Paraty, which is a small colonial city on the coast, 4 hours south of Rio. We had a great start here, arriving after midnight to a guesthouse firmly locked up. After some time we found a door bell, so shortly after that the owner was asking for our passport numbers. This is when we realised that our travel wallet, with all kinds of important stuff in, was absent. Jodie worked out it must have fallen out in the bus so hence I found mys...

Jodie has hi-jacked the blog. And the trip. Sadly, the bad idea bears ( you need to see avenue Q) took over over our evening at 2350 ish, as we came home for an early night, with a call of "if I were you I would go to a samba party, in a favela, and I can call you a cab" so we did. WHAT FUN. I am now in the pool (posh pond) typing. Dawn is breaking and all plans are now on hold as we have been invited to a "BIG" (seats 100,000) stadium match ...

As you can probably tell from Jodie's last posting, written under the influence last night, we are enjoying Rio. It is such a beautiful, vibrant, varied and exciting city. We leave tomorrow and feel that we have only scratched the surface of the place. We have strolled along Copacabana, Leblon and Ipanema beaches, which are so important to the city dwellers and full of life. Leblon and Ipanema are where the beautiful people hang out, playing volleyball, football,...