Albeit we are now in a much cooler place - Sao Paulo - my photograph today is a last reminder of the Pantanal - a Tabebuia tree - you see the yellow and pink ones all over the drier northern end of the Pantanal - they only flower in the dry season and having no leaves seems to enhance the vibrancy of the colours.....the purplish variety were just starting to come out as we left - in a couple more weeks and they will be as vibrant - you don't however see any of these trees in the wetter and marshier southern end of the Pantanal where we saw the jaguars.
Anyway the trip to Sao Paulo was relatively painless - the only pain was being at the airport for the 4.15 flight -perhaps it will help with our reacclimatisation to the UK time zone which is 5 hours ahead of Cuiaba and 4 hours ahead of Sao Paulo. Once in Sao Paulo we took a hotel bus the short distance to the Caesar business hotel in the smartest hotel airport bus I have ever been on - the passengers were shut off from the driver by a door which enclosed about 12-16 seats in their own compartment - it also had wifi -which I didn't use. We are not sure large people would get through the door as it was quite narrow! We arrived at the hotel at 8.30ish......but could not check in until 2pm so went off and had breakfast before sitting and reading in a bright corner before being allowed access to our room. As luck would have it as we went to check in the desk was engulfed by TAM and LAN airline crews checking in, so we patiently waited for the queue to subside!
The room was very nice - king size bed - light and airy......,we quickly unpacked a few things and decided to go to the pool for a couple of hours. Darn it - for 30minutes the sun went behind a cloud and you could really feel the temperature difference 36 yesterday 22 today and with a breeze - but less dust!
Before dinner I decided to go to the gym as, albeit the pool was nice, unusually, I couldn't bring myself to get into the cold water. They charged 20 reals for the gym - which I don't begrudge if it has good kit and plenty of machines - this one had 2 treadmills both in use and a small queue and a stepper which was out of action - I decided to use the weight machines - not well kept and in dire need of a service so I decided to leave and requested my room was not charged the 20 reals - this had to be done via a telephone link to with someone who spoke English - albeit the receptionist and I could deal with ordinary things using her English and my sign language a complaint was a tad harder - it was all apparently sorted so I just need to check my bill later today.
Dinner was a nice buffet and then it was back to the room for a good nights sleep.
Today after breakfast - John set about finalising the packing - he opted for all dusty dirty clothes in one bag all clean in the other......I left him to it as I have learned that that is the best way! We are now ready to leave for the airport at noon as our flight to Madrid departs at 1535.