We stayed longer than we had planned in Rio because for the last 3 days Carol was quite unwell with a very sore throat and headache. We moved from Alices apartment to the home of another couch 5 minutes away, it was supposed to be only for the night but with Carol feeling bad we ended up being there three. Our grateful thanks to Maira and her mother Paula who opened their home to 11 or so couchsurfers over the Christmas and New year period, amazing people.
We had done a lot of thinking and had wanted to follow our original plan and head north up the east coast of Brazil but when we looked into costs we found that these were definitely going to beat us. The next destination was to be Salvador but it is 26 hours away and 260rs by bus or 400rs by plane. After getting there we would have a further approx 30 or so hours to get to the border of French Guyana. There is actually no way we could afford to travel north without taking a few months to do it. Once we paid for the bus even if we camped we would have nothing left for food. So we searched on the internet and found a flight to Caracas, Venezuela, for 800rs (approx NZ$750) so we took the plunge and bought a ticket.
Our last couple of weeks we will spend slowly going down the coast back to Sao Paulo where we will fly out from on the 22nd.
