We woke up bright and early at 6.30 for breakfast and Rob froze looking at the wall over me in horror. There was a frog crawling just over my head. After leaping out of bed and telling him I'd take 'guard the door' duty tonight, we got ready for our morning boat ride on the river. We saw hundreds of different birds and caimans - which according to google are an alligatorid crocodilian. We also saw some weird otter things that looked like overgrown gui...

We spent the first part of the day driving into the pantanal, the Brazilian wetlands. It's rainy season but quite tropical in that it will rain very hard for a few minutes then stop. The costa verse looked like jungle with rolling hills covered in trees, here there is a lot of farming and green flatlands, so if you took away the palm trees you could almost think you were in the English countryside.After a bumpy ride in the truck over, we arrived. It's so ...

Sadly we had to leave our private beach and wooden cabin and head inland, where the proper sightseeing would begin! After a long day of travelling including hours in buses and two flights, we ended up in Campo Grande, the gateway to the pantanal in west Brazil. And we were only slightly hampered by the third degree sunburn we got the day before. Very grateful for the airport lounge pass!!!

Today the plan is to spend the day 10m from our cabin on the private beautiful beach. I'm going to read, catch up on my blog, and chill (in the shade) while rob tries to even out his t-shirt tan! I'm already burnt...

After a pretty quick transfer we arrived at Ilha Grande. Then I, with a small lapse in judgement, decided we could walk over 3km (with our bags) through the wood path to the hostel rather than take a taxi boat. Two hours later we were hot, sweaty and practically divorced. I didn't realise it was a full on uphill trek in my defence.It was worth it to get here as we have our own secluded private beach on the opposite side of the island and are staying in a rust...