Curitiba, sorry we couldn't stay long

View of Curitiba at 6.30am

This first part of our adventure has been a but rushed, well, more like we have very large area to cover in less time. This means long bus journeys and a few afternoons in cities, rather than spending full days looking around. Curitiba is a victim of this. It looks lovely, pretty cobbled streets, beautiful old buildings and quite easy to navigate around. This is really just a pit stop on our way to Iguassu Falls, which we are off to today on a 11 hour coach trip. The coaches here are brilliant, you can be almost horizontal on standard coaches. Very comfortable. 

Our hotel here is great, only £30 but very comfortable and quiet.  The best night sleep so far.

São Paulo. Nightmare hostel and amazing city.

We made the first mistake of the trip; Trusting hostelworld.com reviews.
We are staying in a shit-hole. Sorry, but it is. It's pretty much some blokes house and he is renting out every square inch to gullible backpackers. We are in a glass room, like a fishbowl. Yes you read that right. But it's less than £30 a night, and it's our own glass room, and it is frosted glass you should know.

Paraty

Anyway, after a night in a very noisy hostel in Paraty with slamming doors through the night, and breakfast with local monkeys - who knew what time breakfast was - we caught a 6 hour bus to São Paulo. The trip was great, very comfortable seats, semi-cama. The bus stopped a couple of times for breaks. No drama.

Got into São Paulo and immediately booked our tickets to Curitiba for Wednesday. Another 6 hour coach ride, but for now we are going to enjoy São Paulo.

After checking into the before mentioned 'hostel' we went to the supermarket and bought stuff to cook and stay in to plan our day and book a hotel in Curitiba, oh and do some washing, it's the first place we have found with a washing machine. It's one of the 2 good qualities of the place. The other is the very informative manager.

We got up early ate our breakfast and headed out to the big city. São Paulo has 16.5 million people, that's double London! We walked down to Batman alley to see the great graffiti, then walked up and over several hills to the Metro and caught a train to Luz. Here we saw the Luz gardens, walked and walked the streets of the Centro and made it to the Municipal Market just in time for lunch, how convenient. Naturally we had to partake of the traditional sandwiches, which put the New York delis to shame. One word, HUGE. Quite salty, but the food here is either very sweet or very salty, for example they add sugar to their fresh fruit juices! 

Batman Alley

Municipal Market

After about 4 hours of walking we got back on the metro to Vila Madalena, the area of our 'hostel' (sorry, really have to use quote marks when I write hostel, and it is not really hostel, not really.) we walked around again for a couple of hours until we found this little bar, called Piraja, we've had several small beers. Our feet don't hurt as much now...just waiting for Braz to open, it's one of the best pizza restaurants in SP, according to Lonely planet.

...and it was brilliant. Here is Angel about to tuck in.

Braz

Braz was amazing. Probably the best pizza we have ever had.

Also at Piraja we learnt that in Brazil if you want them to stop serving you beer, put a coaster over your glass, otherwise they keep bringing them. We got a little tipsy, and it cost us about half our daily budget to pay for the many beers.

After 2 nights at the hostel we left Sao Paulo. To be fair the bloke who ran the hostel was amazing, top bloke who told us loads of stuff about all the places we were headed. 

Island Paradise - Ilha Grande

Hotel in Ilha Grande

After the hectic bustle of Rio we booked a transfer to the island of Ilha Grande, 150km south of Rio. It was a 2 hour bus transfer then just a little over an hour on a boat to the island. There are no cars, no banks, just sandy streets winding their way around the small village of Abraao.
We had booked our hotel online (booking.com) the day before and got off the boat at dusk and walked the streets (to be fair, there are only about 5 streets) looking for the place - Riacho dos Camsouras. It was right at the back of the village, down a sandy path, as the village meets the jungle. Wooden rooms, just 8 of them, with hammocks just outside each of them. Very tranquil.
We woke to the sound of a bird tweeting, which was nice..for a while, lucky we booked the ear-plugs. C'mon, it was 6am! The breakfast was amazing, Angel commented that Ewan should have been there to help him eat all the cake, yes cake, for breakfast! Amazing.

Lopes Mendes

We had decided that we would do the 2.5 hour each way hike to Lopes Mendes, a beach only accessible by foot. It was a pretty strenuous hike - well, we thought so, though people were doing it in flip flops (thongs to the Aussies), we had our hiking shoes on and to be honest it was pretty hard going, through jungle and in the heat. This is Angel - dripping with sweat. Ellen muttered under her breath several times 'this beach had better be amazing!).

Hot hot hot!

It was a pretty awesome walk, 4 mountains (hills?) and past 3 beaches before we hit Lopes Mendes. Which when we got there at 11am was quite deserted, and by the time we left at 2, sunburnt, there were quite a lot of people. We decided to walk the 2.5 hours back again. Felt longer than on the way, but we did it.
We then ate a huge pizza. We deserved it. Plus the island had a black out and we had to find a restaurant with a generator, which the pizza place had. Power finally came on at 10.30.

Today we caught a boat back to the mainland then a bus to Paraty. Where we are tonight. In a hostel. With young folk literally running down the corridors. We feel old. Sao Paulo tomorrow, bus tickets booked for 8.30am.

A little sunshine in Rio

Just chillin' with Jesus

So it finally stopped raining.

We had already bought our tickets to Christ the Redeemerfor 10.30 today in hope. 

We tried to catch the bus there, but firstly could not find the bus stop, then when we did find one the bus would not stop, so we hailed a taxi. 

Bonuses of the weather - there wasn't 2 hour (as expected) wait to get on the train to the statue. Just about 15 of us. Brilliant. So it wasn't crowded at the top and we took some photos, would have even better with sunshine.

We then decided we'd take the bus to the main bus station to buy tickets to Ilha Grande tomorrow. Got stuck on the bus for over an hour in Rio's finest traffic, the driver and money taker (2 bus people on busses here) were great, had translation problems but we managed just fine, people are ally friendly here. We finally got to the bus depot, which by the way is right a beside a favela, is a building site and one of the most confusing places we have ever been. After spending 30 mins here and not finding a bus to where we need to go tomorrow, we jumped on a bus back to Ipanema only to again get stuck in traffic for 2 hours. And during this time the sun came out. (A note here; travel during the World Cup and olympics is going to be horrible if you are coming! They said London was not ready!!!!)

Finally getting back to the hotel we booked a transfer to Ilha Grande with reception, R90 each (50% more than the bus would have cost...if we found it, but this takes us to and onto the ferry and saves us cab fare back to the station. So justified..)

Ipanema Beach

We then dumped our day stuff and just took money and our camera to Ipanema beach to watch the sunset, but clouds came over again. It was still lovely, we sat watching the kids play football and volleyball on the beach, surfers doing their thing and just general people watching. On the way to the beach we stopped at Mil Fruitas, our guidebook told us it was the best ice cream in all of Brazil. It was tasty but at R18 (£5) for 2 scoops it had want to be! 

Walked the 2 blocks back to the hotel after eating some local food for dinner - fried cheese thing (pastal) and bought some snacks for the bus tomorrow. 

Tomorrow looks to be very sunny and hot. 

Raining in Rio

Escardia de Selaron

We arrived into Rio under dark, rainy skies.  According to Angel, the flight was scary and he was quite panicked (a note here: Angel hates flying, he says it's a necessary evil). Immigration was quite slow, but we made it into the country just fine.

We'd asked the hostel to book us a taxi so there was a bloke waiting for us with a sign, probably the best thing we have done so far.

The city is huge, the driver told us there are 6 million people in Rio, he pointed out Christ the Redeemer  to us as we drove towards Copacabana and through the tunnel under the statues mountain. His English was not great, but as our Portuguese is pretty much non-existent we spoke in broken sentences, nice bloke. 

This is pretty much the most expensive place we will stay in on our journey, it's £72 a night and very basic, but has air conditioning and private bathroom. It's called Bonita Ipanema, and we're just 2 blocks from Ipanema beach.

Our first day we woke up to grey rainy skies again, a bit disappointed but we did not let that stop us.  We walked from our hotel to the beach then walked along the beach and around to Copacabana beach and along it to the metro. (Unfortunately the metro station 2 mins from our hotel is closed, so it is about an hours walk to the next one). 

We then caught a bus to Santa Teresa and wandered in the rain along the cobbled streets to find the top of the Escardia de Selaron, and walked down the beautifully tiled steps (the pic here is us on them) unfortunately it was pissing it with rain and they were slippery, Ellen fell down them, twice. To be fair it would not be a holiday without Ellen hurting herself on the first day! 

Pizza and toasted sandwiches for lunch at Ernesto's near Lapa, and headed back to Copacabana beach to walk back to Ipanema. Loads of walking today. 

Booked tickets to go up the 'cog train' to Cristo Redentor at 10.20 tomorrow.

Now, to plan which city we head to next....

2 more days!

We've just said goodbye to Ellen's family and friends in Scotland we had a great night out organised by ellens's pals.

Can't believe there are just 2 more sleeps until we leave.

Last day at work. 2 weeks, 2 days till we fly!

So it has finally arrived. Leaving work day.
It's both exciting and scary, the great unkown for 4 months before working again (when we find jobs that is!).
My liver is pretty much shot and I have easily put on a stone in the past month with all the farewells (and loads of Crabbies!)
After accepting an offer on the flat, we finally move out next Friday - after our stuff is packed up for shipping to Australia - and we move in with our friends in Greenwich for a few days, then head up to Scotland for more farewells.
And yes, that is a G&T on my desk.