We had read that the traffic in Sao Paolo was dreadful so we were up early to get out the airport on time for our 9am flight. We thought leaving 2.5 hours was enough but we still struggled to get there in time and organized chaos at the Garulhos airport meant we just made our flight to Cuiaba. I will never complain about Sydney traffic again!

Cuiaba is located in the Matto Grosso state of Brazil - a two hour flight north west of Sao Paolo. It's known as the gateway to the Pantanal and is hot, humid and famous as the Soy Bean capital of the world. It borders the Amazon the North and Bolivia and Paraguay to the West.

We landed in Cuiaba and were met by our guide, Silvio. He drove us to our hotel in town and gave us the history of Cuiaba which like many towns was founded when the Portugese found gold (or rather the local Indian's found the gold and that was the end of that)

Spencer was feeling a but tired so we had a rest at the hotel then we were on our way to the Arena Pantanal for the opening game. Our opponents for the first game was Chile and we had seen many of their fans (La Rioja) on the plane and around town. Silvio dropped us off and we walked through the back streets of Cuiaba to the ground. It was by now 33 degrees and 90% humidity!

The atmosphere around the ground was amazing - the Chileans letting off firecrackers and beating drums. It was now time for kick off, the sun had set and we were ready!

Well, as we all know now the first 20 mins were poor and the 2 goals Chile scored were from individual touches of brilliance and bad defense. We could have really crumbled then but credit to the team for coming back to first score and in the 2nd half we could/should have had the equaliser. Overall, our defense is still suspect but we took the game to the Chile well in the 2nd half.

Silvio was there to meet us outside the ground and drove us back to our hotel to get some rest - next day - off to the Pantanal