Ihla Grande 23rd July - 25th July 2006 Bit sad to be leaving Rio and it?s quite an early start to to get the bus Angra de los Reis where we will get the bus to Ihla Grande. We arrive in Angra and Stu gets ripped off straight away when buying some little Empanadas. It seems to be quite common with the Brazilians playing a little game whereby they knowingly overcharge you and then wait for you to say "hang on a minute", Except that we don?t know how to sa...

Oh Rio, Rio....... July 20th - 23rd 2006 What an unbelievable city Rio is, probably the best city we have visited so far, bar none. In summary let's just look at the undeniable evidence, the 5 S's. Sun - Plenty of it, not a cloud in the sky. Remember that this is the middle of winter and it's 28 degrees!! Sea - Wesern Atlantic - Wicked, ruff as hell. Stu lost his sunglasses whilst trying to jump the 2.5m+ waves and also whilst simultaneously t...

Arrive at the bus station early afternoon and head off in search of some accommodation.. We are fortunate to meet a nice kiwi couple who recommend the hotel they are staying at so we decide to head there straight away as we have the feeling most places are going to be booked up. The hotel is brand new which might sound nice, but actually meant that most things hadn't actually been finished properly! Still, it was a big room and it was near the centre of town, ...

Sunday 9th to Saturday 15th July 2006 The usual barest minimum of sleep on the long overnight bus from Montevideo sees us arrive at about 8 in the morning. The weather in Cordoba is very nearly warm. Cordoba is another nice old spanish colonial town with the token grid pattern, nice church cum cathedral and several good looking squares. We check into a hostel, have a little walk around the old town district and get a red tour bus to see the sights. ...

6th July to 8th July 2006 I'm sure there was a reason why we didn't ever really plan on going to Uruguay, it could have been that there are far too many U's in the name of the country or something but we went there anyway on the back of a recommended extended day trip. Colonia was a very nice little town and as the name suggests it was a former Portugese colony. We were very sad to leave Buenos Aires just becausesome of the architecture it reminded us...