Once we had done the Argentinian side of Iguazu falls we felt it only fair to do the Brazilian side as well.
We crossed the border, dropped our bags in storage at the bus station and headed off to see them – all of which took far longer than expected and we had another bus to catch!!
They were however well worth it. Most people we met preferred the Argentine side to the falls but we both liked the Brazilian. There was certainly more to do on the Argentine side in the way of walks etc but we liked the overview that we got from the Brazilian side.
After the falls it was a 22 hour bus to Rio......a 22 hour bus that turned into 26! We reached the bus station and hailed a cab to Sao Cristovao and to the family we were staying with in Rio.
Yet again we were received with great hospitality and warmth although it was a little harder this time as there was very little English spoken and we had no knowledge of Portuguese – other than thank you which we repeated to pretty much everything.
Our first day in Rio was somewhat wasted as we had to stay in and wait for our Sambodromo tickets for the carnaval. That evening however we were taken out by one of the daughters and her boyfriend to their local bar on Ilha do Governador with a live samba band, good caprihinas and nice cold beers!
Our second day in Rio was far more eventful as we set off first thing in the morning by bus to find a hotel in a massive city we had no idea how to navigate. All was OK though and we made it to our required meeting point to be picked up and be taken off to go hang gliding over Rio!!
We signed our lives away on a disclaimer, received our student hang gliding licence and headed off to our launch area high up in the national park that overlooks Rio.
Once there I was given my training – essentially putting one arm round my pilot while the other held his t-shirt at the waist and then running quickly at the same pace as him for about 5 metres. Job done! I was now ready to take off! Shit!
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| The extensive training....just a short 10m jog!! |
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| Uh-oh!! I'm nervous!! |
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| Soaring through the sky! |
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Flap those wings!
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After having done bungy jumps, sky dives and paragliding you would think that running off the side of a cliff with little more than some fancy canvas and a skateboarding helmet between me and certain death would be a little less daunting. I can assure you it wasn't! We were suddenly running into the abyss with my pilot telling me to keep looking at the horizon when suddenly the ground wasn't there anymore and we were swooping through the air above Rio de Janeiro. Awesome! We flew above the national park, sky scrapers and sea before coming into land on the beach – although expensive this was totally worth doing and an amazing way
to see some of Rio!
Alana followed me down about 20minutes later and was nicknamed 'Road Runner' by her instructor because of her legs at take off – check it out below!!
Can't seem to upload the video yet... but watch this space!
We also visited Copacabana beach and chilled out with a beer. Unfortunately it had clouded over since the morning so we werent able to visit the statue of Christ or Sugar Loaf, two of the other things we had planned to do.
That evening Mabel (the daughter of who we were staying with) and Leandro, her boyfriend took us to Lapa (a district in Rio). Here the carnaval party was in full swing with thousands of people partying in the streets. These gatherings are known as 'Blocos', where people follow a bus or truck which has either a band or music pumping out of it and you just dance along behind it in the street.
We stopped in at a bar along the main drag of the Bloco, sheltering from the rain having a couple of drinks while watching the madness! It was a great night.
Unfortunately when we woke the weather wasnt the best again and we werent able to view Christ. Again it would have to wait till tomorrow. Instead we explored Copacabana a little more, bought some Havaiana's (flip-flops) and then went to meet Donald (a friend we had met in Peru) for a couple of cheeky beers in Ipanema.
When we got to the meeting point, a bloco was just starting to warm up, people were dressed up and the beer was flowing. We had a brilliant night in amongst the party, chatting to people and drinking beers and frozen caprihinas. After just a quick couple of beers, it was 2am when we got to bed......very early for carnaval standards.
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| Donald, Alana and I |
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| A few partygoers! |
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| A small pizza for dinner. |
Today we are pretty excited! Tonight we are going to the Sambadromo to watch some of the best schools floats!
Today we were taken to see Sugar Loaf mountain by Mabel and Leandro. We didnt go to the top but we walked inside the national park at its base which is home to all sorts of animals including a lot of small monkeys.
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| One of the monkeys |
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| Sugar Loaf from the beach |
We again put off going up to see Christ as the weather was again not the best....fingers crossed for tomorrow! For lunch we were taken to a restaurant within a market and had 'Carne do Sol' – LOADS of meat, chips, veg and rice. It was really tasty and there was so much of it we had to take a doggy bag of leftovers (which still included 2 steaks!). When we got back to the house we had a quick snooze before getting ready to head to the Sambodromo.
When we arrived it was already packed, even though we were there 2 hours earlier than advised! We managed to get decent positions to view the parade at the front of the stand though and had an amazing night watching some awesome floats. We thought the 4th school – Unidos da Tijuca - was the best, but they were all VERY impressive!
We eventually got home from the parade at about 6am but were up again at 10am! We HAD to go and see Christ today – it was our last chance. The weather, however didnt look to promising.....maybe it would clear by the time we got there though.
It didnt! Infact we were lucky to get there when we did as just after we left it got really bad. We had at least managed to see Christ up close, we just didnt get to see the amazing views the position has to offer out across Rio.
Cristo Redentor seen we headed back to the beach and chilled out with a cheeky beer and some chips.
When we returned to the house, we were bought a massive pizza to share with the family and thanked them for having us stay before we packed our bags and got an early night ready for our trip in the morning.
We said goodbye to the family and thanked them once again for their hospitality and headed to the airport. A quick and easy flight and we were in Salvador heading to the bus station ready for the next leg of our trip – an overnight bus to Lencois in Chapada Diamantina National Park.
We arrived at 5am after probably our worst 'bus sleep' of the trip. We didnt do much with our day other than run some chores, catch up on sleep and work out our way around town.
The following day we had another lazy day in the sweltering heat at a swimming hole with a natural waterslide about 30mins walk from the town. It was nice to relax properly, enjoy some sunshine and cool off in the water. The waterslide didnt half bruise my backside though!!
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| The water slide |
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| Nervous.... |
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| Committed..... |
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| Done! |
It turns out we had enjoyed the sun a little too much, as although we had put sun cream on we both got quite badly burnt. Bathed in cooling moisturiser and more suncream we decided to go on a tour today. We went first to another swimming hole with a waterfall about 30mins drive away. As it had rained hard in the night this was much fuller than it is normally with a bit of a current and a lot of water coming over the fall. We relaxed here for a couple of hours, swam and ate our lunch. We then went to see the most famous view of Chapada Diamantina at a mountain named Morro do Pai Indacio. As you can see below the view was pretty amazing!
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| I believe I can fly... |
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| Strange pygmys were everywhere! |
From Chapada we headed back to Salvador and stayed in Pelhourino. The area has been just done up by the government so it is now a beautiful world heritage centre, although the areas around were still pretty run down and it could be dangerous to wander in to them.
We spent the two days we had there checking out the local area and walking down to the beach. It was tiring just doing this due to the 36C temp!! MORE sun!!
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| Chillin out to the max.... |
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| and relaxing all cool.... |
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| shootin some b-ball outsida school.... |
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| 3 months of following the wet season guaranteed a silky white body! |
After our brief stop in Salvador we flew down to our final stop in Florianopolis.
We had a great few days here enjoying the sunshine, attempting to surf and generally relaxing after our busy few months in South America!!
It was now time for us to head to that cold, wet and grey island I was born in. We should have been on the home straight......we checked in for our flight and were told there was an hour delay (typical bloody British Airways), no biggie, we waited patiently for the flight. We then overheard a guy tell his friends that he had heard a guy who was meant to be on our flight was now on Air France as our flight was non-existent! Brilliant! We went to investigate further and were told that our flight was not cancelled but would probably not be leaving (best non-committal quote ever!)!! Excellent! We were transfered onto another flight and ran to another terminal to get the flight. Flight cancelled!! ANOTHER ONE??!! Back we sprinted to our original terminal to ask why we had just been transfered onto another cancelled flight, they had no clue but soon we would be put onto another flight while our luggage took the grand tour of Sao Paulo airport! Finally, everything was sorted, we boarded our Air France flight and crossed our fingers and thankfully we were soon in the air heading towards Paris. A short stop over in Paris and we were en route to Heathrow. 40mins later and finally we we arrived. Our South America adventure over.
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| Soon to be landing in France.. |
We had an amazing 4 months, our only regret is that we didn't have longer! Ah well, next time.....
THE END!
Till next time....
