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 t...

Another ferry ride and a couple of hours on a bus and we had arrived at our final destination on the tour. It seems odd to me but our tour only had one afternoon and one night stay in Rio de Janeiro. It is probably the most famous place on our tour and the whole group has been looking forward to it immensely. Fortunately we all booked extra time in Rio. The afternoon that we arrived we decided to book ourselves onto a city tour which works out cheaper than doi...

From Paraty we took a bus and then a pretty chilled out ferry to a place called Ihla Grande (translates to Big Island). This is a really cool island, very similar to Koh Phi Phi in Thailand since there are no cars allowed and it has a chilled backpacker vibe. But it is not as fake as Phi Phi because there are locals living on the island going about their daily business. We reached the island in the afternoon and were keen to grab a quick bite before heading to ...

The moment we were dreading, a killer 24 hour bus ride. This would be 18 hours by public bus to Sao Paulo and 6 hours by private minibus to Paraty. We were given the option to do the first 18 hour stint on a more luxury bus for an extra £20 each...surely the amount we paid for the tour we shouldn't be on the cheapest bus anyway?! The offer was irrelevant though as everyone had to agree to the upgrade and since we were all on different budgets it was never going ...

From Uruguay we took taxis across the border and it was probably the easiest land border crossing we've had so far because the taxi drivers did it all, even our luggage. Just inside Argentina we played cards while waiting for yet another lovely 12 hour nightbus (freezing cold and leaking from the ceiling) that took us to an Argentinian town that is near to the Brazilian border. From here, we then boarded a private minivan to the town of Foz Du Iguaçu - while in ...