Salvador is a major Brazillian tourist destination mainly for it's musical roots and hosts the most revered Carnival in the land. Rio is the one all the foreigners know but Salvador's Carnival is known as being more lively and accessible to all than Rio's. We arrived on the 20th three days before it started. It seemed all the world and it's neighbour wanted to come here including travellers.The word was out that Salvador was THE place to come. We thought that too...

We returned to Brazil via a long day bus from Santa Elena, Venezuela which departed on the morning of the 15th and arrived in Manaus at 12.30am on the 16th. Manaus is a city of approx 2 million people situated very near to where the Amazon starts. We we warned it wasn't the nicest of places and true enough it lived down to our expectations. Quite frankly, bar a nice opera house, the downtown área is a dump and also hellishly humid. After our Venezuala r...

We arrived at this Brazillian border town after a 14 1/2 hour bus ride from Ciudad Bolivar, fresh from being robbed (see the Angel Falls write up). This was another in our awful bus journies list as this one was peppered with military check points which means members of the military coming on board and checking your passports etc. On this one they excelled themselves with four seperate stops including a 4am one which involved leaving the bus, getting our luggage ...

We arrived in Ciudad Bolivar on the 6th February after a two stage, 18 hour bus journey from Merida which featured a Venezuelan special, the utterly freezing night bus. They really go over the top on the air conditioning here and it's quite amusing to see all the Venezuelans with hats & coats etc on in such a hot country. We had to wrap up warm too. The excuse we've heard for this is that the cold temperatures minimise the smell from the toilet!! Ciudad Boli...

We arrived in Merida, in the South West of Venezuula via a 11 hour night bus from Maracay on 31st January. Our first job before anything was to sort out our money as we have encountered an ATM problem which has dogged us since we arrived in Venezuela. Basically not one single ATM will accept either of our cash cards since we arrived in the country. Not in Caracus airport, not in Maracay and not here either. It's an absolute nightmare as having no money is th...