Starting early to ensure we made the most of the day, we took a mini bus to Angra dos Reis at 7.30am with Sheridan and Tracy to catch the 11.30am boat to the island. We realised that we were actually part of a tour boat which stopped at three different islands, ending with Ihla Grande for lunch. It was mostly local tourists and families rather than gringos. Although we were just expecting to lay on the beach all day this turned out to be a welcome surprise as we ...

We arrived in Rio as the sun was setting, after a longer than expected journey as there was traffic due to it being a holiday weekend for Brazil's independence day (9 hours rather than 6). Our hostel (Vidigalbergue) is situated on the edge of Vidigal favela but we'd been assured it was a safe area, which we realised ourselves when we arrived as there were several police watching the road outside. We were welcomed straight away with Caipirinha's (Brazil's signatur...

Our experience of São Paulo was an interesting one. Us and a fellow traveller Sheridan who we had met in Buenos Aires decided to follow the Lonely Planet's advice and head to the down town districts where we found our hostel quite easily. Even walking from the subway station to our hostel we had the feeling of being in a huge city. We knew that to get a proper feel for São Paulo we needed time to explore, which we didn't really have and so we quickly decided th...

On the morning of the 5th we crossed the border to Foz do Iguaçu, the Brazilian side of the waterfalls. The trail was much shorter and there wasn't as much wildlife to be seen, but as we were further away it gave us a better view of the whole waterfall. We walked across a bridge right into the mist and saw amazingly bright rainbows and took an elevator up to a viewing point right above 'Devil's Throat'. We enjoyed another home made lunch of hot dogs and salad o...

We had planned to visit the falls the day we arrived, but after the long bus ride and arriving at our hostel with a huge swimming pool and 30 degree heat we decided to relax and go early the following day. The town of Iguazú is extremely small with only 30,000 people and you can walk through the centre in 5 minutes. We still enjoyed wandering around in the sun and later on lounging by the pool playing cards. We woke up early on tuesday to catch the first bus to...