roganjosh

The cachaça festival in Parity was excellent entertainment but once the alcohol disappears hanging out on tropical beaches in the rain starts to get a bit depressing. To mix things up a bit I headed to the pantanal with travel buddy Liz in search of sunshine and wildlife, which we found in abundance. In Bonito we went snorkelling in the Rio Prata, swimming along with hundreds of fish, and a one point a caiman. Further into the pantanal we went fishing for piranhas, rode around on horses and even saw an armadillo – which made the whole trip worthwhile for me.

After all that countryside I decided to take a side trip to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil built from scratch in the 50´s. Some of the Oscar Neimeyer buildings are very cool, the future as seen from the past, but the city itself is a bit strange. Entirely designed for cars and buses it´s almost impossible for pedestrians to get anywhere easily. I hear it´s a nice place to live, but 24 hours and a city tour was enough for me to feel like I´d seen everything.

Having taken a 20 hour bus trip to get to Brasilia I was glad to find a cheap flight to Rio that cost about the same as the bus would have done. Rather than 17 hours watching some portuguese movies I had a two hour flight, with food, and the most amazing flyover of Rio as we arrived into the city´s domestic airport. As the sun was setting we flew in past Christ the redeemer, turned for a view of sugar loaf and then circled around the bay, feeling like we were skimming the water as the plane came in. An exciting way to arrive, and having been a little bit over travelling for the last couple of weeks I was suddenly really looking forward to exploring Rio. When the weather is nice it´s an amazingly beautiful place, a city with beaches and rainforest, and mountains keeping all the different neighbourhoods apart. I´ve been into a favela, visited Christ, hung out on the beach, watched the sun set over the mountains and then moonlight sparkling off the bay, drank caipirinhas, watched a local team play football in the Maracana stadium with samba drums pounding the game along. There´s been a couple of rainy days too when not much happens, and a couple of hungover days which are much the same, but for the most part Rio has been a really great place to end my trip. I´ve stayed in a nice hostel, met up with old travel buddies and met some great people to go out drinking with. I just about feel like I could carry on from here if I wanted to, go and explore the amazon maybe, or head back to Argentina to visit Patagonia, but all good things have to come to an end, and now it´s time to come home. Ah well, there´s always the next trip…

Apart from a few convenient flights and a solitary train trip the last couple of months have been bus journey after bus journey; from hours driving through the deserts of chile to breakdowns in Peru, bone jarring roads in Bolivia to the luxury of Argentinian coche cama and finally an uneventful tourist bus in Brazil that´s delivered me to the Atlantic beaches of Paraty. By far the best bus journey on my coast to coast adventure was the last one in Argentina, from Buenos Aires up to Puerto Iguazu. I had a seat that fully reclined, my own TV screen with a choice of 6 movies, steak, wine and champagne before bed! 16 hours flew by, and I was a little disappointed to finally have to get off. Puerto Iguazu and the Iguazu falls were even better than that bus journey though! The falls were just amazing and I had a beautiful sunny day to wander around the park surrounding them on the Argentinian side. I was prepared to be underwhelmed by a couple of waterfalls, but the Devil´s Throat is an enormous wall of energy in liquid form, being thrown down a cliff to instantly bounce back up as driving rain that drenches all onlookers. It was just stunning to watch it in action from above, and then stupidly fun to go on a speedboat tour that takes you into the spray from below!

As much fun as Puerto Iguazu was I woke up the next day to pouring rain and decided to make a break for sunny brazil – only it´s been non stop rain in Brazil since I arrived. I spent two days in Sao Paulo, which must be a city full of hidden gems, because I didn´t find any of them, before reaching Paraty where the drizzle is somewhat offset by the fact that there´s a rum festival going on here! Everyone is walking around with tiny little tankard shot glasses slung around their necks so that they can taste all the different types of cachaça on offer at the festival stalls. One shot costs 1 Reai, which is about 33p. I´ve yet to see a ´please drink responsibly´ sign at the festival.

The festival ends tomorrow and with no sign of any improvement in the weather forecast for the next week I´m not sure whether to stick to my original plan of travelling along the coast to Rio. Not long till I´m home now!