Big, Beautiful, Buzzing, Bug-loving, Bum-shaking Brazil

(Most of the bum-shaking is to be found in the next blog entry at Carnival!)

Think of Brazil and there's probably a picture in your mind of a beach, with coconut trees, a warm balmy evening, beautiful people in skimpy clothes, barefoot children playing football and soft Bossa Nova playing in a beach bar. It has one of the best marketing images of any country in the world. We are now 3 weeks in to our time in Brazil and it has surprised us, delighted us, burnt us and soaked us, bitten us badly and fed us well. It is a country of extremes, it's enormous, its hot, its sticky, it can rain like you've never experienced before and the fruit assortment will blow your mind. It's in many ways exactly what we expected and in others so much more.

Our first stop was in the town of Bonito, a very long day's drive across the productive farmland that makes up a huge part of Brazil and a very quick on the road lunch to get us there are early as possible the very nice but slightly dull scenery left us wondering where all the coconuts and bikinis were, but that's the reality of Brazil, it has a strong economy in the grand scheme of South America, based on its own vast resources of minerals and productive land, so a lot of it is just that, neat tidy farms that stretch on as far as the eye can see. But Bonito awaited us and its main selling point the crystal clear rivers whose clarity is due to a specific and rare mix of rock type and minerals and where you can snorkel and see a whole underwater world of amazing fish. We headed out to the Rio do Prata and had a wonderful day following fish around and relaxing to the sounds of the jungle around us as we floated peacefully down the river.

Half of team snorkel

Not exactly amphibious

Crystal clear

Next up was a short hop up to Fazenda (ranch) Santa Clara in the Pantanal, the enormous wetlands that take up a huge chunk of Brazil, the working cattle ranch has opened its doors to tourists and we made it our home for 2 nights, it was a bit of a treat for us all as they did all the catering and we got to experience some wonderful Brazilian cooking with lots of beans, meat and general tastiness! They also took us out on some great excursions to experience what this part of Brazil is most famous for – wildlife! Brazil is hands-down the world leader in brightly coloured, funny looking absolutely amazing wildlife, from macaws to monkeys to tarantulas to anteaters to capybaras, from tiny ants carrying giant leaves to terrifying-looking caiman. It would take a miserable-soul not to enjoy the wildlife here (except maybe the bitey ones – we're all sporting some rather impressive bite collections, but hey, they are part of the great Brazilian circle of life and a small price to pay!)

I'll let the amazing photography of our talented photo-donators do the talking here (thanks team!)

Sunset at the lodge

Heading off on a wildlife safari

Moomins

Beautiful Macaws

Howler monkey

Beautiful blue macaws

Rufescent Tiger Heron

Iguana

Caiman photography club - Wayne, Iain & Keith

Caiman

Giant otter

Baby anteater in a tree

Armadillo

Dave

Glowing caiman eyes at night

Tarantula

Heading off to find piranhas

There's one!  Ali & Paul

Louisa and her piranha

Gen isn't sure

Jess and local guide

Steve came off worse in his fight with a fish

Horse riding Sarah Mike and Gen

In the evening the piranhas were cooked up for dinner

Roberta and fish

It was also party time! Due to our ongoing truck troubles we had spent New Year's Eve a month before in a less than celebratory mood back in Punta Arenas, the crew missed it completely, so we moved New Year to January 26^th to allow everyone to celebrate together and moved midnight to 10pm because the crew were very tired! The drinks were strong, it was a good night and a bad morning for many.

Lumberjack Party. New Year mark II.

Heavy traffic getting out of the Pantanal

The timing of our arrival in Brazil wasn't wonderful, a prolonged drought decided to break at around about the time we reached Santa Clara and we saw some quite spectacular rain which would follow us for a while through the country, but on the plus side the drought had ended for the local people, which we all of course focused on selflessly as we wrung out out clothes! It did also take the edge off the baking Brazilian sun for us, which is definitely a plus for us cold-country dwellers!

Next up we trundled our way back across the farm-covered South and broke our long drives up with overnight stops at a bushcamp where we were entertained by the local frogs who seemed to be having an 80s-keyboard disco with their frog-chorus (you need to visit Brazil to fully understand the noises that the frogs here are capable of!) and a lovely little camp before heading in to the hills to almost 1500m (a pleasant reminder of what cold feels like) and dropping down the other side to Picture-Perfect Paraty.

Bushcamp enroute to Paraty

Or at least that was the plan. Me (Emma) and Simon were already having heart palpitations about this drive, on the previous year's trip only 20km from Paraty we had had to do a 300km detour due to a bridge wash-out (did I mention the rain here is powerful?!) we used our best Portuganglish and read all the signs which said “road works – expect delays” but nothing about closures or restrictions and just to confirm asked the locals which direction for “Para-gy?” (t is pronounced as a g here – the alphabet keeps you on your toes in Brazil) and they smiled and pointed encouragingly in the direction we were going. Brilliant.

So we headed over the pass and began to drop down the other side, the lovely paved road made us both relax and just when we were beginning to think it was all going to be easy (something you should NEVER do) the road fell apart. Ok so there was a road, but you know those scenes on Top Gear where they take an 'accidental' wrong turn and end up crawling their way on an unfeasibly bad road with terrifying drops over the edge – well it was very much like that, except, in our defence, there was no wrong turn!

Interesting road to Paraty

We thought the Top Gear Back-Up car had arrived, the driver had a beer in hand as he made his way along the trecherous road

The further we went, the worse it got and with nowhere to turn around we had to continue. Then we found the “bridge of doom” aka a very small bridge with many holes that shook when we – normal-ish sized humans - walked over it, let alone a 13 tonne truck.

Much calm and reasoned discussion was had.

It went something along these lines...

Simon uses his background as a bridge structural engineer to inspect while Emma's wondering what she's done with the 'bridge collapse risk assessment form"

Meanwhile the group bounced up and down in the back of the truck with excitement (we definitely have a bunch of overlanders!) As a precaution, and because they were so excited and bouncy, we got everyone off the truck and walked them across and Simon, very slowly, inched his way across the bridge while we all held our breath.

And.....we didn't fall in the river!

We didn't smash through it!  Yay!

So with that exciting interlude over we needed some beach-time stat and pretty little Paraty awaited us with sand, sea, a gorgeous colonial centre complete with giant cobbles, little crabs with one giant claw who pop out of the road when you're not expecting it, brightly coloured boats, wonderful souvenir shops, fabulous fresh fruit juices and the now weekly Odyssey cocktail night (Ali makes a mean Mojito) Paraty was good to us.

Pretty Paraty

Lovely cobbled streets are shut off to cars

Alternative transport is used instead

Crabs fighting on the cobbles after the tide has receded

Tasty cake stalls

Pretty churches

Haviana shopping

Monkeys at camp - White-Eared Tits (no really)

Paul makes friends with a mango

Very cute

Boat trip time!

The perfect boat

Ali & Simon

Jess

Gen & Emma

Beautiful bay

Ali makes his amazing mojitos for cocktail night 

Somewhat rainy - cook tent provided a perfect cocktail bar!

Fresh mint, lime, mango, ginger, Brazil is cocktail-paradise!

Conjure up that image of Brazil in your head again – is there a giant statue of Jesus on a hill there? A big round mountain that looks (apparently) like a sugar-loaf? (whatever that is) Well there should be because Brazil's heart and its Soul live in Rio de Janeiro, quite possibly the best setting for a city on Earth, so much of what makes Brazil what it is comes from here.

There aren't clever words I can write to do justice Rio de Janeiro, it's buzzing, it's edgy, it's cool, it's beautiful, it's fun, it's funky, it's noisy, it's generally awesome. Here are some photos instead.

Her name is Rio

The heart of Rio

Wayne in Rio

Photo time

The Big Man

Wayne & Paula enjoy the views

The beautiful Lapa Steps

Tiles have been donated from all over the world 

Rio Cathedral

Inside the stunning modern Cathedral

Roberta goes hanggliding

Drinks on Copacabana beach

At the Copa, Copacabana

You can never have too many bikinis

The Rocinha Favela (shanty town)

On the Favela Tour

Whether on the city tour exploring the tourist highlights, learning about Brazil's diversity and the reality of life for many Brazilians in the local favelas (shanty towns) watching the football or hang-gliding over the amazing volcanic landscape: an excellent and fascinating time was had all round!

But the time had come for us to wave adeus to Rio and head on up to the part of the trip that Simon and Emma had nicknamed 'beach-hop.' We would be hopping our way up the Atlantic coast, chewing up the kms and punctuating them with sand, sea and suco (fruit juice.) We had a fair whack of kilometres to cover – our sense of what is 'far' and what is 'close' has changed somewhat after a few months in South America (but have you seen it on a map?! It's HUGE!) but our drives up the coast were actually pretty comfy in the end and we found some really lovely spots to stay. The further up the coast we got the more interesting the scenery and the people got, people started waving and shouting at us in excitement, the Mediterranean look of the people changed to African (Brazil's one of the most diverse countries in South America, there are a huge number of Afro-Brazilians, many of whom are descendants of slaves brought over to work on the plantations.) The colours of the houses got brighter, the trees got greener, suddenly people were waving cacao pods and sugar cane at us through the window of the truck, it all made Southern Brazil seem rather restrained, (which it really isn't!) In short it was great – there's nothing more contagious than an enormous smile on the face of a local, who seems to think you turning up in their town is the best thing that's happened all day (that or they're all permanently giddy with excitement – it's possible, there's a lot of sugar, coffee and chocolate grown here!)

Crossing Guanabara Bay

Coffee growing in the hills

All getting a bit tropical - the bananas here have developed their own evolutionary protection of a plastic bag to keep the birds away, it's amazing!

Relaxing at our first camp

Chris and coconut

Bit rainy at our second camp!

The only place to be when it's raining

Rain's stopped! Time to get busy relaxing again

Dinner time at camp

We stopped in a little town called Trancoso and it was so lovely a 2 nights were nowhere near enough, in fact the morning we left a bit of coercion was required to drag everyone away! It's a very smart very pretty town with a beach that goes as far as the eye can see, Helen and David did their very best to walk to the end of it but even they were defeated! It has a gorgeous central square that is lit up like a fairy land, it's what I like to call 'parent friendly' ie your Mum and Dad would love it: it's classy, it has wonderful gourmet food, it's picture perfect and even the toughest of cookies were won over by it.

Beautiful Trancoso Beach

Chris, Steve, Louisa, Claire, Kaye, Gen and Sarah on the beach 

Funky blue crabs

Cocktail time again - this time for John's birthday

Drinks out on the Quadrado

The beautiful Quadrado by night

After Trancoso even more beach awaited us with a stop near the town of Ilheus where our camp was near enough on the beach and we all fell asleep listening to the crashing waves and mostly realising how lucky and privileged we are to be in such a beautiful place.

Ilheus

Ilheus Cathedral

Colourful boats

Dave eating cheese on a stick

Our beach, next door to camp

What was all the beach-hopping leading to? Well, a week of beach time was to be followed by a week of party time at Salvador Carnival where I am writing this from. But that's another story for the next blog!

So of course our regular readers will know that we are having truck woes, our normal truck, poor old Ithaca, had broken down after Christmas, in such spectacular fashion that an international operation of repairs has been underway, since then many hours of work have been done, many sleepless nights have been had and many stress hormones have been produced in order to get her up and running and back to us. Meanwhile we are in a replacement truck which is chugging us around the country, it got us down the road of doom to Paraty even, but she does lack the level of luxury and space to which we had become accustomed which has taken its toll in this hot and sticky environment. Brazil can be tough: the heat, the mosquitos, the rain, but those things are part of what makes Brazil so brilliant – its sheer outpouring of life: the bugs, birds, frogs, fruit, anteaters, armadillos, and more colours than you ever knew existed in the natural world, and we're nowhere near finished yet, Brazil holds many delights for us in store.

Spirits are high, on the whole we realise how lucky we are to be seeing all these amazing things and that they're worth some discomfort. Travelling through this compelling and fascinating country, experiencing its colours, tastes, smells and smiles, we are all here because we love to travel and that's the stuff we live for.