OK, so final South American destination was Rio de Janeiro. What a city! The sea and mountains merge together in a sweeping and irregular pattern and the city itself sits in the valleys in between. It's for this reason that you never feel like you're in a large city, especially if you stay at the Copacabana like I did. After my second longest bus ride (20 hours) I arrived in Rio at lunch time and already loved this place. 35 degrees, humid and loud. ...

Into the jungle we go. Well, not to start with extactly but the first day is spent in Manaus (very central Brazil in the middle of the Amazon rainforest). Ï´m travelling with Dan the geeza from Woodford, London again and he proves still to be a great travel companion. I need to speak next to nada Portugesse as he loves using his bilingual skills. So, first day we manage to book a five day tour into the jungle some 280km away from Manaus and then proceed to the ...

Feeling refreshed from the bus ride we took a taxi to the nice part of Itacare where all the pousadas face the beach.  A we were told that 10 reias is the taxi fare anywhere in town even if you've going shorter distances.  Tourist BS i reckon....we're finding brazil to be very expensive and so for that reason look forward to leaving.  However, we managed to discover a gem of a pousada that was 50m from the beach with a huge balcony overlooking the scene below....

Feeling refreshed from the bus ride we took a taxi to the nice part of Itacare where all the pousadas face the beach.  A we were told that 10 reias is the taxi fare anywhere in town even if you've going shorter distances.  Tourist BS i reckon....we're finding brazil to be very expensive and so for that reason look forward to leaving.  However, we managed to discover a gem of a pousada that was 50m from the beach with a huge balcony overlooking the scene below....

OK so after sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow for 2 hours the engines finally started and I was off. Arrived at the hostel in Salvador at midnight and it was hot and sticky making the air conditioned dorm much appreciated. The old historical town of Salvador is what I imagined old south american cities to look like, with churches on every street growing weeds / trees out of the bell towers and buildings having that cute faded look about them whilst being very col...