The drive to Brasilia was fairly uneventful. We bush camped for the night which wasn't too bad although it took us so long to find somewhere appropriate to stop the truck that it was almost dark by the time we got there! The tent demo (our 1st time camping) was therefore very rushed and myself and Jade manage to get ourselves in a bit of a pickle but finally got the thing up, only for Daniel to come an tell us that if it rained we would get drenched so he fixed it for us (another mark in the women are useless book!). We got up at 5 the next day and carried on driving. We got stopped several times by the police; the 1st time Daniel pretended he only spoke English (sometimes it's better that way as they can't be bothered with the hassle of trying to make themselves understood). The description for what happened to the windscreen was "quack quack boom....!!". He seemed to accept that and let us go. The 2nd time the police got on the truck and asked everyone where they were from. He said they were looking for arms and drugs, at which point there were a few sarky comments but off he got and let us on our way.

The windscreen was getting worse and worse. Vinny ended up sitting with a crutch between himself and the centre of the window to try and give it some support and stop it caving in. I think I forgot to say earlier but all this time I've been sitting in the front seat so would have been right in the line of fire had something happened. Oh, the adventure!!! Anyway, it got to the point where the boys driving only had a tiny square to look through, the wipers didn't work (and it's the rainy season here right now) and then I spotted a lump of glass dangling off the inside of the window, right in Daniel's eyeline closely followed by mine! By the time we got there the top was hanging off (so much so that you could stick your hand down the outside!). It's a miracle that it had hung on for so long!

Got to Brasilia at around 9.30pm but spent 90 minutes driving around the city trying to find our hostel. It was ridiculous. Brasilia is supposed to be one of the easiest cities to navigate as it's in the shape of a plane but it seems that there are so many one-way streets and none of them have names so it's highly frustrating, especially so late at night with a windscreen which was by this pint hanging off at the top. The only thing keeping it on was the bungy cord, the coke bottles and the tent mats. Oh, and the metres of gaffer tape around the outside. Finally got to our hostel which was miles away from anyway (including Brasilia it seemed!) and they didn't even sell beer so bed it was. As few of us went out the next day to see the "sights"; the highlight of which was the Burger King we had for lunch! Brasilia is basically a new town, a bit like Milton Keynes only arguably worse, considering it's the capital city of Brasil. It was built in 1960 (so they're very excited about this year's anniversary) and, as I mentioned before, it's in the shape of a plane with most of the government buildings and the sites located along the fuselage. The wings are mainly residential areas. It's all split into zones and sub zones with no street names so hard to actually find anything. The architecture looked very communist-ish to me, clearly typical 1960s buildings of grey concrete and no design. The cathedral looked quite interesting (similar to Paddy's Wigwam in Liverpool) but when we got there it was covered in white plastic and closed for renovation so we couldn't even see that! We saw most of the main bits and bobs, had our naughty lunch, did a bit of shopping (it does have quite good malls going for it) and headed back to the hostel where we hit the vodka. That was the beginning of a very long and VERY expensive night as we all went for sushi which cost us a small fortune and then found that there were no bars open past midnight (in a bloody capital city??). We ended up spending a fortune on cabs to go to the outskirts of the city to a place called 'Flamingo' which was supposed to be 24 hours. It ended up being a motel and a kind of service station where they served us one drink and then said they were closing. Eh?! We ended up eking out our one drink for at least 2 hours and playing stupid games. 4am I got to bed - I'm too old for this!

Got up the next morning feeling a wee bit delicate. I missed breakfast so got very grumpy (you all know what I'm like without food). Went with Debs and Esteban to one of the malls to stuff our faces with McD's. Yes, I know, that was twice in 2 days but sometimes you just need some comfort food, especially after far too much rice and beans! We lost Esteban in a toy shop (which only had about 5 aisles but we still managed it) and Debs and I spent the day shopping and then went to the cinema. All a nice change and a bit of civilisation.