Iguazu Falls!!! Ben and I are both so excited to finally see them, this was one of our must see sights on the trip. Everyone say you should see them from both sides to get the full impact - from the Brazilian side for the overall view and from the Argentinian side for the up close and personal view! We spent one night in Foz de Iquacu on the Brazil side before catching a bus over the border to stay in Puerto Iguazu on the Argentinian side for 2 more nights. From...

Monday 19th - we've been away for a week! No arguments yet and we've decided that silences are good, we can't talk non stop for 8 weeks. Our bus trip to São Paulo was long last night - it ended up taking 8 hours as the route went all through the winding mountain roads. We got to our hostel in Vila Madelena late and today we are flying to Iguazu Falls. Before our flight we visited Batman Ally, which is well known for the amazing and colourful graffiti, then went...

From Ihla Grande we headed 2 hours further west by bus along the coast to Paraty, a colonial village with wide cobbled streets and white washed buildings with colourful shutters. We didn't plan anything whilst in Paraty so we wandered the streets looking in the souvenir shops, round the market and enjoying the atmosphere. We sat outside for a burger and drinks at Casa Coupe and the following day found a lovely crepe restaurant called Oui Paraty for a quick lunch....

Our next stop after Rio is Ihla Grande. We didn't get off to a good start as the tickets Ben had booked online were for the 16th instead of the 15th which we only realised after making our way to the bus station and being carted off the bus because we were sat in someone's seats! We finally got on another bus and made the 3 hour trip to Ihla Grande,including a 25 minute speedboat from the mainland. Ihla Grande is the place where Brazilians from Rio go on holiday ...

We've had 2 days in Rio and I have loved it much more than I was expecting. Yesterday we visited the Selaron steps which were designed by a Chilean artist and are set with ceramic tiles from all over the world (although made famous in my eyes by Pharell and Snoop) They're so pretty to look at but they're in Lapa which turned out to be a pretty rough area so we got the bus back to Ipanema afterwards and had our first Caipriniahs at a beach bar watching some locals...