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.