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5th June 2012
Marks birthday blog
The day got off to a great start, Mark liked all his presents (well what couldn't he like about getting antibacterial hand gel, a pack of imodium and two types of loo role, normal and moist) Stevie now has a little bit more room in her bag. At breakfast there was a new type of cake drizzled with chocolate...yum! We piled it onto our plates. (going to miss this breakfast) We then tried to log into our expedia account to check the next stage of our journey but it said our itinerary for the next leg of our trip (Salvador to Belém) had expired...oh no! Thinking this had to be connected to our banking issues of the past couple of days Mark finally gave in, turned off airplane mode and phoned hsbc.....what a joke, apparently they had no record of him telling them that he would be in south America until October so they blocked his card...wonderful!
(Mark is currently writing a strongly worded email to stress his dissatisfaction!!!!)
After a 25 min tirade about them being the 'worlds local bank'...."my backside they are" we decided to get on with Mark's day of birthday fun and deal with our problems later!!!....to the quad bikes!
Dont worry only Mark drove the quad bike as Stevie clutched on behind for dear life and shouted encouraging stuff like...slow down...don't go through that...get out the river...and 5 metres (distant between quads)!!!!
After signing our life away we begun our 3 hour tour that was completely off road and amazing....if not a little life threatening at times and Stevie thinks our portuguese must be getting better as we understood most of what the non English speaking instructor/guide was telling us!
(Mark loved the quad, we went over mountains, sand dunes, through and across rivers. At one point the whole quad was submerged. We got soaked and covered in sand and dust, but it was awesome) we saw our first snake when we stopped for an 'ok' check. I'm sure we were going to fast as the quad engine kept back firing. The guide told us the quads were 4.2ltr not sure if that's true as my car back home was 1.1, but we covered 20 miles never the less.
Back at hostel with no broken bones, fractures, or expensive broken quad bike charges....now booking another flight to Belem for the 7th and just found out the first one wasn't cancelled....now we have 4 seats on the flight at a total cost of $740.....good job we are flashpacking....oh wait we aren't....s**t.
Airplane mode is back off and Mark has called expedia in the US (because we couldn't just be normal and book through a UK site) and it's all been sorted. They will refund the second booking...we hope!
A moan and a groan about a very large phone bill...and the discovery of a strange pink substance on Mark's toothbrush later we are back chilling in the hammock.....can't wait to have a birthday drink tonight!
- comments
dad the old man You two are amazing.. must have some stress at some point in the day. lol.