Rio!

Ryan and I spent our last days in Salvador essentially doing nothing. Plans to see folkloric shows and go to the beach quickly disintegrated into basically sitting around the hostel and playing fuseball. We did check out the nightly concerts that kept us awake each night until 2 in the morning and would usually just end up mock fighting the little kids who try to pickpocket you constantly, crazy little gaffers! All in all we were happy to leave on friday morning. Got to Rio after a 27 hour bus ride (ugh), during which I pumped myself up for the Stones concert by listening to 12 of their albums. Met up with Jason, Mukuda, Andre, Blair (and his brother) soon after arriving here and began preparing for the coming festivities. Copacabana seems like a really nice area, although there are some shady undertones to it. The place was absolutely packed yesterday with people arriving all over for the concert. Went down to the beach at about 5:30 and pushed our way into the crowd until we were about 60 metres back from the where the VIP section started. Compared to most people, we definitely had some of the best seats on the beach. Stones came on at about 9:50 and did a solid two hours before finally departing. The whole thing was awesome. The crowd was fairly well behaved, the Stones played an awesome set and it was cool just to get up on each other´s shoulders and peer out over a sea of a million plus people. Not sure where they get all their energy from, but Mick especially is insane on stage and I only hope that I can party like that when I´m 2500 years old. Was strange being in a crowd that big, since we were right up by the stage, we´d look back along the beach and simply couldn´t see the end of the crowd. We were warned by everyone not to bring anything that could be stolen, so we bought disposable cameras instead. Although probably sound advice, at no point did any of us feel in danger of being robbed or pickpocketed and saw a ton of people with cameras out. Regardless, Andre is getting the disposables developed as I type this and hopefully I´ll be able to get some shots up here within the next few days. Not sure what else is planned for our stay here so we´ll just play it by ear. Tonight we´re grabbing the metro and heading down to see a soccer game in the gigantic stadium here (apparently the biggest stadium in the world, but this has yet to be confirmed). The games are supposed to be legendary, with rival fans throwing dead chickens and cups of urine at one another, so I´m going to try to go in with a full bladder. Finally caught our first 5 minutes of a hockey game last night, but were crushed to watch as the Swiss struck down our mighty Olympians...not cool, but hopefully this will wake them up a little. Until next time!

Only took 54 hours to get here...

Following the Pantanal, Ry and I have split off from Mr. Lush for about 10 days in order to see Brasilia and Salvador. Jas wasn´t too keen on the massive bus rides, so he went to a bit of a closer spot. We started things off with a nice easy little 7 hour ride to Campo Grande, then dove straight into a 23 hour ride to Brasilia and finished off our marathon with a 24 hour ride into Salvador. Spent a night in Brasilia quickly, mainly because we couldn´t get a bus right away. Really bizarre city. It was constructed from nothing in the 50´s/60´s according to some wacky architect´s ideas and is supposedly the definition of a modern city (only when talking to residents of the experiment, everyone else thinks the place sucks and was a giant waste of money). Arrived in Salvador at about 11 in the morning yesterday. Cool city, very old, cobblestone streets etc etc. A live concert and celebration outside our window helped to soothe us into a hot, sweaty, loud sleep. Went to one of the original Capoeira schools last night with a couple other guys, given that Salvador is the Capoeira capital of the world. For those that don´t know, Capoeira is a martial art...but also kind of a dance. It was outlawed for a long time (it was used by the african slaves, much to the chagrin of their masters), so to practice it and actually use it, the people turned it into a type of dance instead of a traditional fighting style. Picture the break dance fighting scene from Zoolander, except with really beef guys and more twirling...Pretty cool stuff, the guy that runs the school is apparently the top living Capoeira artist alive. Tonight we´re off to see some Candomble ceremony...not sure exactly what it is, but apparently it involves old ladies being posessed by demons and other nasty spirits, so we should be in for a treat, hopefully none of them turn on the crowd.

I risked the bandits and pickpockets that camp outside our hostel in order to bring my camera here and now the bloody site refuses to upload my pictures, damn you blogger. Oh..nevermind, apparently they did work, and Im much too lazy to erase the previous statement!

A quick shot of Salvador as I ran from the hostel to the internet cafe 10 metres away.

Horsebacking in the Pantanal, that was one of our guides, Carlos, fantastic rider, but unwilling to let us hunt the emus while on horseback...he gets an 8 out of 10

Thats actually not the shot I wanted to upload...but regardless, fishing for piranhas in the Pantanal, my attempts to fly fish with the ´rod´ proved unsucessful.

Brasilia, in all its glory, the main complaint is that its totally designed for cars and has way too much open space, Ry and I believe the people of Brasilia are simply lazy, but thats a horse of another colour.

Pantanal

Before even getting off the train in the Bolivian border town, we were assaulted by a band of Pantanal tour guide operators. The Pantanal is the region of lowlands/jungle that occupy the surrounding area and make up a landmass about half the size of France. We eventually succumbed to their wheeling and dealing and agreed to `check out´ their company and hostel for a free ride through the border and into Corumba. As usual they tried to rip us off but eventually lowered the price by a 100 Reals (Brazil´s currency) for a 3 night stay at some farm out in the hinterlands. They threw lots of numbers at us, like 20% chances of seeing anacondas and jaguars and anacondas eating jaguars and pumas eating anacondas while crocs eat the pumas and whatever else they could come up with to get us out there. Knowing that this was all BS we signed up half heartidly. We spent the first night at The Camp, where you basically just hang around in hammocks and provide your body as target practice for mosquitoes. The next day we were supposed to move to The Farm, but instead spent yet another night at The Camp. Following that we moved off onto the farm where through some stubborness on our part and lack of organization on theirs, we stayed another 4 nights out there. At first we jumped on the opportunities to go on safaris and night safaris and walks but eventually we were resigned to hanging out at the farm and eating the fabulous meals they continued to cook us. One day was spent piranha fishing, which involves attaching chunks of lamb to a string and waiting for the angry little bastards to strike, although I had more fun swimming in the river rather than actually fishing it. Was kind of odd swimming in a place which people are pulling piranhas out of 10 feet away, but neither of our species seemed to mind. Went for a couple horsebacking trips through the area. Twas lots of fun racing around on some quality horses and attempting to herd the trillions of cattle that populate the region as well as racing the odd Emu. We tried desperately and in vain to get the superbowl out there along with the help of two americans, but were all dissapointed to find ourselves watching either endless soccer games or the Brazilian version of Wheel of Fortune. Met lots of good guys out there, including the zoologist, a crazy aussie with one eye and as mentioned the two american fellows. Im still on the lookout for the elusive irritating american that so many people have warned me of in the past, but have been unable to find him as of yet. The trip ended with another voyage through mosquito clouds and black flies, without any anaconda, puma or jaguar sightings. Today we hope to find some info on flights to Salvador and plan out the rest of our brazil time before the Rolling Stones concert on the 18th on Copacabana beach, it´s expected to draw over 2 million people, so it should be good! Ciao!

No pictures! Lo siento...but I have no camera with me at the momento!

Onward to Brazil!

Mainly a picture update! Been slacking in my posting of these so I figured Id throw a couple up. Spoke with the guys from the Jeff O´Neil Show on the CFox yesterday, very cool, thanks to Scotty and my sister, Tara, for giving me that opportunity! I was on an internet phone so it was a little slow and hard to hear them, but hopefully if it happens again I can grab a landline for a more solid connection. Last night we celebrated Ry´s birthday, actually it was a day long celebration. Started with a champagne, filet mignon & egg breakfast and ended at some weird lounge party/bar populated by a lot of rich Bolivian kids. In between we hit up the mafiaso snooker hall (picture the bar from Goodfellas except all old bolivian men who sit around, smoke, play snooker and run drug operations...pretty sure we were the first and last gringos to ever enter that establishment) and spent some time at the local Irish Pub (yes, there are somehow irish pubs in Bolivia...very authentic). Once we get our visas from the Brazilian Consulate, we hope to grab a train tonight to Brazil! Twill be sad to say goodbye to Bolivia, but alas, all good things must come to an end.

Pictures!

The infamous stone tree in all it´s glory!

My attempt to smoke some dynamite before the mine tour.

Random lake shot from the Salt Tour, looooots of scenery similar to that.

Another shot from the moon...err the salt flats.

The award winning stone statue, built with the help of that random Belgium chap who you see between Ry and Jas. Note the flying buttresses and excellent engineering support. PS - Kiwis...your statue sucked.

The average terrain we drove across during the salt flat tour.

Two random miners in the bowels of the earth. You can see the guy's wad of ever present coca leaves in his cheek. Although confrontational looking, he was actually quite a nice guy and really warmed up once we gave him a few sticks of nitro glycerine to play with.