We´re still going! But only 2 wks left, hard to believe its coming to an end but we have more to do...
Uruguay was a quiet couple of wks for us, we had to go through the red tape for Auguts Brazil Visa which made us stay in Montevideo for longer than expected, and buy a bus ticket to brazil from here, which was annoying! So we decided to head to the coast of Uruguay anyway and go back to montevideo to leave for Brazil... long way round but we got to stay in Punta Del Diablo in a Cabana on the beach all to ourself which was a nice change to hostels! The town was lovely and picturesque with only a local shop, restaurant and a bar... very quiet indeed! So we lazed on the beach for a couple of days but the bad weather followed us so we left for Punta Del Este which is the Surfers Paradise of Uruguay. Here, unfortunately it was the off season, and the bad weather continued to follow us so we were bored out of our brains! The only thing to do in this kitchy town is to sun bake in your g-string bikini and spend lots of money. Luckily we had a nice hotel (no hostels worth going to here!!) where Tim could sit and watch the soccer finals all day...
Finally, my visa came through so we headed back to Montevideo to get a bus to Brazil. We had 8 hrs to kill between bus rides and we soon found out it was Labour Day in Uruguay so NOTHING was open. This was the most boring day of my life.. until we found an internet cafe, thank god. We may have gone a little crazy otherwise.
When we eventually got on the bus to embark on the 19hr bus ride to Brazil, Florianopolis - a beachy island, we thought we were heading for better weather and things to do...
Due to a slight hiccup in Uruguayian customs, we almost didn´t make it to brazil. When we took the ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, the company neglected to give us an entry card... so here we were, ready to cross the border at 2am in the morning and the bus driver asks us for our passports and entry card... He explained to us that we had 2 options.
1) Drive back to Monetvideo for 6hrs tomorrow and go to Immigration - no thanks.
2) Pay 45000 pesos - about $2500 each! No way!!
He asked us for what money we had on us (about $10), took our passports to the immigrations guy (we didn~t have to get off the bus), he told a couple of jokes, shook his hand and there you have it, 2 illegal departures from Uruguay!! Hello Brazil.
So after the rocky bus ride we made it to Florianopolis and went to our hostel on the Sth part of the island. It was really nice, the waves actually crashed onto the balcony it was that close to the beach! But alas, there was monsoon rains here so not much to do... the owner decided to hire a karaoke machine for the nite, but 2 Brazilians who held no tune whatso ever serenaded us for 8hrs which the hostel had buckets around the place stopping the floods!!!
The rain stopped briefly, and we tried our hand at fishing and ssite seeing but not much happened here and certainly no sun! We managed to score 2 free nites accomodation cos we´re such lovely people and the owner liked us.
So now we´re in Rio! What an amazing city! Set on the mountains with amazing beaches everywhere. We caught the cable car up to see the Christ the Redeemer statue and amazing views of the city, lazed on Copacobana beach (finally sun!),been to the Lapa Street Party and partied with the locals. We also took the Favella tour into the shanty towns in the hills hwere 200 000 people live in shacks and don´t pay tax. pretty amazing levels of poverty, and economics and well worth the vist. If you have seen City of God, you´ll know what its all about. The hostel are taking us to a Favella Funk party on Sun nite (serucity and all of course!) which shouhld be an experience.
We´re struggling with the Portuguese - just when our Spanish was getting OK we get thrown into a whole new world and it reminds us how we felt when we first arrive in Sth America.
Unfortunately the hostel has a dose of bed bugs so thats put a buit of an itch into the holiday, but we´ll solior on! If the weather holds out, we will go to Ilhe Grande early next week, or fly to Salvador for relaxing really... bring on the sun!!
Photos will come soon.
