Due to the airline kindly cancelling our flight, it ended up giving us an extra 5 days in Brazil. So obviously it is not all bad, but having 11 days in Rio is far beyond our budget. So to break it up we decided to go to the small picteresque town of Petropolis, or so we thought anyway.

After 3 months of not having to sort out any accommodation or transport, it was a bit of an effort getting into this mode again. Gladly it was not difficult so we proceeded by taking a windy, picturesque bus ride into the mountains. After transferring to a local bus, we were surprised to be entering a large bustling town. It felt like it was more busy than Rio even though it was so much smaller. Nonetheless we slowly made our way through the crowds with our backpacks to eventually find our B&B, which was made more difficult to find given that it doesn't even have a sign. Today was my mum's birthday, so we went back out in a hunt for internet. We walked up and down the main commercial street to no avail to then randomly fall upon an internet cafe when giving up hope. Lady luck was not on our side since they said skype doesn't work, but fortunately there was a restaurant next door (the only one we had seen) with wifi...so gladly my mum finally received her happy birthday wishes from me!

Being the only tourists in town, we unfortunately could not celebrate bonfire night the evening before. Instead all we could do was aimlessly wander the cobbled streets of Petropolis, since there is not a lot else to do here. The most striking thing here is the Sao Pedro de Alcantara cathedral. It can be seen from almost anywhere in the town and it's gothic architecture is impressive (I'm sure Sara would have appreciated it more 10 years ago!) From there we walked towards the main square, where we finally found the tourist information at the third time of asking (we failed twice the day before searching for the other two offices). Here we found out about the ease of access to a national park - it gives us something to do for tomorrow!

We thought we got up too late for breakfast the first day so we made sure we got up early enough this time before heading to the national park. It is quite ironic that this place is called a B&B, even more so the fact that it said breakfast was included as we found out that they don't even do breakfast here. It turned out (in the small print) that because our room rate was not over a specific level, that we were not eligible for breakfast even though it explicity said we were when booking! Needless to say we were not happy. Not to let this get us down, we made our way by public bus to the national park. There was one problem though, none of the buses seemed to go to the end of the line. So there we were on the outskirts of the park, in the middle of what felt like a favella (slum), wondering how safe it actually was. We thought as we made the trip we may as well have a go, so we proceeded along the road towards the green mountain area in front of us. After a couple of kilometres we cut our losses and gave up, more so because it felt quite dodgy. In hindsight we were a little quick to judge, since the people we passed were really friendly.

It was not the worst decision we ever made though as we went back to the metropolis of petropolis and treated our selves to lunch. The lunchtime menu offered us a steak, mounds of potato in whatever form desired, rice, beans (not baked!) and a salad bar for less than £5! Bargain. Barely able to move, we wobbled back to our room to chill out and try catch up on the blogs. I even found a welsh speaking programme on the tv! Obviously I couldn't understand much of it but I'm just putting it out there what a diverse audience us welsh appeal to. The next morning all we had to do was check out and return to Rio, so logically you get the bus from the opposite side of the road you came in on. If only everything was that simple - an hour walking around with our backpacks, we finally found an illogical point to catch the bus in a sweaty mess. Nevermind all part of the adventure...although the end is getting close now, only two nights to go, scary times!

Xx