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Chloe and myself have been in Brazil for five days now and ´surprised´would be the word best used to sum our time up so far. Surprised firstly at just how vast and diverse not only Rio or Brazil were but the whole of South America. Surprised at how expensive travelling around is, mainly due to the sheer size of these South American countries and mainly surprised that noone who´d been before that we´d spoken to had told us any of this stuff!
After waiting to meet Clo in Rio international airport we made our way to our hostel in Rio, ´Mellow Yellow´which was ok, popular and right on Copacabana beach although solid rain for the first two days of our trip was another surprise.
We started to get out and see some of Rio but only had a couple of days and, wanting to get everything sorted for when we´ve left meant we left seeing the Christo Redentor statue, despite actually attempting and getting there too late, a Favela tour and the Maracana football stadium etc until we get back to Rio for the final leg of our trip. We haven´t even managed a proper night out yet as we´ve been pretty hectic in the days trying to plan for the next couple of weeks.
We did spend some time on the beach as well as visiting a really nice area called ´Santa Teresa´which is the old part of Rio and has some really nice old european style colonial buildings. This is a part of Rio we again found surprising, in that this type of architecture was so close to favelas, new houses and this was reflected in the ecosystem, a beach, onto a forest with a city sandwiched in between, all in all very diverse. Luckily Chloe´s been keeping me clued upon the anthropology of the area which has made things clearer!
From Rio we flew to ´Campo Grande´and got a bus to the area we are currently ´Bonito´which is the spanish word for beatiful and this really is reflected in our surroundings. More countryside and we took time today to go snorkelling in one of the areas many completely self-sustainable eco-farms. We snorkelled a couple of kilometres down crystal clear rivers, seeing a variety of fish and animals along the way. The group behind us saw a 4 metre long anaconda which are only seen around twice a year, so we missed out! Don´t worry, I have had no encounters with spiders yet!
Off to the Pantanal next which is very exciting, more wildlife and eco-tourism and is a well known national park. So keep in touch, hope you´re all well, we´ll get another of these up soon. Lorcs and Clo
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