Well, we are nearing the end of our two weeks in brasil and we have only experienced a small part of this enormous country, Unfortunately we haven´t had the time to explore the north, only the south, but that has given us a taster of the country.

But we need to quickly rewind to our last few days in Peru, which were spent in Lima. We had a mini adventure which was visiting the local hospital! Nothing much to worry about, but a little traumatic nonetheless. I (Hannah) had developed a rash on my stomach during our Peruvian travels and had put it down to stress and tried to ignore it, but after two weeks of it getting progressively worse we felt it was time to have it looked at. The only place we could find to do this was the private hospital. It was a very nice place, but difficult to find an adequate level of spoken english, so I was sent to the emergency room (scary), but it turnred out to quite pleasant! The doctor informed me that I had developed the rash because I had eaten something I was allergic to, I still haven´t figured out what, but the cream and tablets have done their job and the rash is a distant memory!

Our plane journey from Lima was impressive, we flew over the Andes which was really impressive, snow capped mountains and beautiful scenery.

We started our Brasil trip in Rio de Janeiro, which is a beautiful city if viewed from high up, especially from sugar loaf and Christ the redeemer. The whole of rio is surrounded by mountains, so many of the buildings are high because of the lack of ground space. Rio was not quite what we expected, it is quite an unclean city with many homeless people scattered around. The city is famous for it´s favella´s, which are the slums, and they are on the outskirts of Rio. Brasil in general is a country aspiring to be a modern urban country, especially in the south, but it desperately needs social reform. Many of their Presidents have been corrupt or spent money on ridiculous projects. For example one president created a huge debt because he decided to build a new capital city, so Brasilia was built and replaced rio as the capital of Brasil. The sad thing is, in the lonely planet guide which we have, the write up on this city is minimal and must have the smallest city map of all of the places written about in the whole chapter on Brasil.

Next visit was Sao Paulo. It is much the same as Rio, but on a dirtier scale. It didn´t seem to be the safest place to be after dark, so we spent little time wandering the streets! It is an enormous metropolis and it was with a lighter heart that we hopped on the bus for a 15hr bus journey to Foz Do Iguaçu (on James Birthday!). The bus journey wasn´t the most comfortable, no air con. so we just sweated for 15 hours!

But the bus journey was well worth it. The 4 days we spent in Foz were great. We met some really nice people and despite the 45 degree heat and the ever present mosquitoes (swollen ankles due to 18 bites on one foot!) we will remember foz as one of the more memorable places visited. The hostels you stay in can really make a difference to the experience you have in a place. A small privately run hostel is much preferable to a large hostelling international place. We got to chat to people from all over the world, with different experiences. It also gives you an opportunity to find out where the best places are to go in different countries because you will usually find someone who has already been there. Our main reason for going to Foz was for the Iguaçu falls, which were incredible, over 200 waterfalls all in one spot, overlapping the borders of Argentina and Brasil. We went to both sides and both were impressive- it was nice to go back to spanish speaking for the day, it has been so hard to speak in Portuguese, we keep forgetting and revert back to our very limited, but well practised Spanish! Our one extravagance was a birthday treat for me(james!!!) it was a speedboat ride from the Brasil side. We went up the river as close as we could to the Garganta del Diablo or Devil's throat which is the largest of the falls.The driver then took the boat and sat it under one of the smaller falls and completely soaked us,which cooled us down alot! Then it was back down the rough rapids (more getting wet) to the end of the experience. Despite being completely drenched it took very little time for us to dry out, due to the excessive heat of Foz do Iguaçu!

Another local sight in Foz was a food place which was James' idea of heaven. It cost R$8.50 about 2 pounds and you loaded your plate up with buffet food - salads and rice/noodles/potatoes. When you sat down waiters kept coming round with a variety of meats freshly roasted in their barbeque. Then the pizza came round. You could literally eat as much as you wanted, James had meat piled high on his plate! A bargain find which James will not forget in a hurry!

We are now in a city called Curitiba, which is pretty and very European. We are only here for 2 days, after which we are going to a port town called Porto Alegre which is our stop off to get to Uraguay. Brasil has been interesting and we definitely would like to come back to explore the rainforest and the northern parts.

Anyway, one last photo... hopefully we have sorted out our photo problem, we are making the file size of our pictures much much smaller so we should be able to fit many more on this blog.

This photo is part of my flora and fauna portfolio, it has taken me almost three months to have had enough time to see a lizard, get the camera out, turn it on and take the picture without the damn thing scurrying away. It has been a bit of a mission (and annoyed James intensely at times!) to get a decent photo of one, so it is being shared with you all!