Our arrival in Sao Paulo was eerily similar to our departure from Sao Paulo - rain, storms, and wet, very wet. Our attempts to find ATMS here don't seem to be working - only the 24 Banco ones are around Vila Madalena, and they hate international cards. So we returned to Cafe Hostel to find somewhere to eat and found a Ramen Bar around the corner that had opened up not long after we left Sao Paulo last time. On our walk down, we met a Dutch girl who was looking fo...

We arrived at 1pm in the sweltering heat and nearly died. Somehow we found the correct local bus to Copacabana to get to our hostel, El Misti Rio, one of a very large chain of El Misti hostels in the area, and in Brazil. Our dorm is hot and cramped and no air con is on during the day, and the beach seems to be packed full of tanning-but-already-black Brazilians wearing string bikinis (even I felt overdressed wearing my normal bikini, wow). We went for a wander a...

Another boring bus day. We packed, bought supermarket foods for the bus, then checked out and took a 'taxi' (really a minivan) to the bus terminal. 25 hourse of bus time in semi-cama. Yay.

Last night was a bit of a nightmare. We'd set our alarms (in the correct time zone this time) for the tour and fallen asleep. At 2am, I was woken by 4 Brazilian motorbike travellers who felt it necessary to make the most amount of noise possible, completely forgetting hostel etiquette. They turned the lights on, talked loudly, showered in the dorm ensuite, unpacked everything, giggled loudly, and completely ignored two sleeping people. Only once I shhhhed them di...

After the genius moment of forgetting we are in a different time zone, we managed to miss our tour to the Argentine side by a solid hour (most amusing conversation with the receptionist who we thought was just being sassy when really she was just telling us the actual Brazil time!) So we laughed at our stupidity and jumped on a local bus to get to the Parque das Aves, the bird park. For the next two hours, we followed all of the little kids and their families (ya...