hello,

Its currently pouring with rain here at florianopolis where we arrived yesterday evening so i thought id fill you all in on what emma and i have been up to in the last few days and its been so hectic and i havent written for a while.

After our exciting and unexpected boat trip into paraty with patricio (mum made me laugh when she said she thought ¨dont get into cars with strangers¨ would have been enough advice), emma and i managed to blitz paraty in aday. its a very pretty little colonial town but its pretty sleepy so we decided to stay onlt two nights and cram everything in. up early the next morning, we explored the old town before taking a boat trip out to the islands and beaches nearby. in the evening we met up with sabrina, eleanor and martha and went to these waterfalls that have really smooth rocks so you can slide down them. it was so much fun but i decided to be guinea pig and went down first. turns out the left hand side was the side to go down. as you can probably guess i went down the right. result- stuck under a load of tree roots with eleanor (who followed shortly after) s knee in my stomach. once wed grasped what to do though, we stayed till it started to get dark.

the next day was dominated by pouring rain. emma and i got stuck in an icecream shop in town and watched as the clock ticked closer to the departure time for our bus and as the rain got harder. eventually we braved it back to the hostel for a quick change before catching the bus to sao paulo.

this was our first long(ish) bus ride. sadly it lulled us into a false sense of security. reclining seats, lots of leg room and regular stops at service stations made the 6 hours pass quickly and we cheerily bought our ticket for the 16 hour bus journey to iguassu at sao paulo. one step onto the grubby, crowded bus told us it was not going to be quite the same experience. emma and i shared the experience with loads of really dodgy looking locals including one who tried to sellus stuff while we wereon teh bus. emma and i wee delighted to arrive with all our belongings and ourselves in tact, vowing to not us ¨pluma¨bus company again.

iguassu the town was grim. the argentian side is supposed to be better but given that we were staying in brazil it made sense to stay on the brazilain side. pulkling out our lonely planet we opted for the recommended HI hostel nearby. emma said that she was feeling claustrophobic so far from water which seemed odd given what we were there to see, but if she felt claustrophic in town, it was nothing compared to the hostel which was in the middle of nowhere and ressembled a trailer park. still we found the whole thing funny and happily enough headed off to see the brazilain side of the falls that afternoon which were spectacular. a bus ride in teh wrong direction also gave us an unplanned scenic route of the countryside which was nice.

cheeky trip into argentina the next day to see that side. feeling slightly apprehensive about the fact ive not got my immigration form to leave brazil ( the guy cheerfully stamped my passport at the airport saying ¨welcome to brazil¨without asking me to fill one in) but people seemedto cross ok there. the argentian side was also impressive though very touristy. we hoped to catch the 8pm bus that night to florianopolis as we were craving the beach too much but when we arrived they had all sold. our only other choice was pluma so bracing ourself for another enjoyable experience we sat at the station waiting for it. 2 hours afterit was due to leave it arrived and a total of 6 hours later than expected we arrived in florianopolis, voted ¨world party destinatiuon 2009¨. where we are now.

had great morning aty the beach anf off out tonight

lots of love

xxxxx