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…