We stayed a night in the Brazil / Bolivia boarder town of Carumba for a night with a French couple and a Swiss girl, had to get lots of stamps for leaving Brazil and entering Bolivia for the passports so it was a good job they all spoke Spanish and Portuguse!! We went to by bus tickets for the trip to Santa Cruz, Bolivia but the locals had bought them all to sell them on the black market, so what is known as death train was not looking too hopeful for us. Our tax...

We didn?t get eaten - too much! We?ve just left the Pantanal and one of the most amazing few days ever! A guy who ran the last hostel we stayed in used to work for a campany called Ecological Expeditions which organises tours right into the heart of the Pantanal. So off we went to meet our group and guide: 3 people from Isreal, 1 from Germany and our guide, Mario aka Ace Ventura! We were taken to the middle of nowhere to a small camp in the Pantanal where we slep...

Well we survived the 15 hour bus journey to Foz Do Iguacu (or Foz as we?ve been calling it). It went surprising quickly - we started at 2 in the afternoon and arrived at 5 in the morning although we didn?t get much sleep. We saw a really fierce lightening storm in the distance at one point which lit up the sky for miles around. It was amazing and kept us entertained for a while - not when we had to drive through it though, our eyes began to hurt from the severe f...

We got our first long-distance bus from Rio to Angra dos Reis, then caught a boat to Ilha Grande. And what a boat it was! A cross between an old fishing boat and a passenger boat, we lay on the deck while sailing past tropical islands and mountain peaks. We didn?t really know what to expect of the island but all our ideas of the place were exceeded and more! It was like a perfect paradise that didn?t seem real. We stayed in an artist?s pousada with our own room a...

We spent a few days on Ilha Grande, had pretty much as perfect a day as you can get, took a boat to what they call the best beach in the world (Lopes mendes) which included a 20min trek through the tropical rainforest (which I did barefoot like a true Brazilian) The beach was amazing, the sea was perfect and I didn?t even get sunburnt. After three days on paradise island we headed off back to mainland (or so we thought) to catch the bus to Sao Paulo...we however ...