wow! im in japan. and i survived the gruelling 3 flights from sao paulo to get here. an achivement like none other and hopefully never to be repeated. especially when the flight was delayed getting into dulles and the baggage handlers useless and slow so i had 25 miutes to get from one side of the airport to another, not to mention re-checking my bag before the plane actually left. it was boarding before id even celared immigration. a very close shave! but anyw...

hey everybody! things are really looking up for me here! the monsoon which was drowning rio for a couple of days seems to have backed off and we had enough sunshine today to go up sugar loaf which was amazing. done a bit of shopping and a bit of sightseeing, met up with chris fordham, andrew chetwood and his gfriend and some other ppl so thats been very cool. hopefully we'l be sampling some rio nightlife tonight too worried relatives will be relie...

looks like our luck with the weather has pretty much run out. theres a hurricane in the atlantic and boy can we feel it here in rio! its been raining constantly since monday night in paraty. we tried to go to ilha grande but the rain closed in and no boats were running so headed to rio a day early only to fin ourselves in a monsoon! nightmare.... the weather is set to ruin all our plans for the rest of our stay here so if eveyone could keep their fingers crossed ...

so ive uploaded some photos.... you can get an idea of how pretty paraty is. but my camera isnt doing it huge justice im afraid and ud have to see it to believe it! im afraid im a little sunburnt... most of my friends wont be shocked at that. somehow i got burnt today and it was cloudy!! not looking forward to carrying my rucksack tomorrow........ anyway, time to leave paraty and our pretty little hotel. we're headed up the coast towards rio tho we're hoping ...

hello everyone. you will be relieved to know that i have made it safely into and out of sao paulo without getting involved ingangland shootings or riots. we arrived early into thebus terminal. got a taxi across to a different bus terminal and got the heck outta there. carolyn's official foreign office advice! so weve crossed a continent now. we were at the pacific in lima just 3 weeks ago and now weve been paddling in the atlantic at paraty. weve had one nightm...