Parati, Brazil

Been on this beautiful coastline of Brazil for 3 days now.  Brazil is not like I´d imagined it at all.  The country is beautiful.  After 6 hours on our truck we all arrived at a wooden beach hostel by the coast with our very own private beach to go kayaking, snorkelling, mountain biking etc.  Parati is located in the mountain area and the town is cobbled with beautiful coloured buildings, loads of ice-cream shops and haviana flip flop shops.  Anywhere was a nice change from that last dive we stayed in Rio.

The place looks like somewhere in Italy - very European.  Some of my group spent yesterday on a jeep tour looking at waterfalls, so myself and another girl, Emma, decided to see if we could find a cheaper tour as we´ll be seeing the Iguazu Falls on both the Brazilian and Argentinian side soon enough.  We managed to get a local to take 8 of us out to the little islands outside Parati on a 3 hour boat trip.  It cost the equivalent of 7 quid..pure bliss, but someone has to do it.

The nights were spent drinking (no changes there then) as it gets dark around 5.30pm. We head off early tomorrow at 6am for a 2 day drive to The Pantanal, where we wild camp along the road somewhere...we all can´t wait to use a bush as a toilet and a bucket of water for a shower.

It wouldn´t surprise me if we all caught some form of dysentry by the end of this tour as the toilets have no soap and you´ve to throw your toilet roll in a bin beside the toilet no matter what you end up doing.  Not that surprised really as south east asia is similar.

After The Pantanal, it´s more travelling to a town called Bonito. Again, there´ll be no internet connections, so it could be a few days before I update again.  Weather is still roasting..bit like Irish weather. Will try and upload photos at some stage, but the internet connection is really slow.