Down at the Copa.....

.....Copacabaaaaana (Barry Manilow sing-a-long).

Maracas on the Copacabana

Chilling on the Copacabana

Rio is awesome....need we say more.

We are staying really close to the beautiful Ipanema beach and have already spent far too much time in the beach bars on Ipanema and Copacabana drinking 'chopps' of beer.  Mind you, today was more civilised as we had wine with our lunch instead....haha.

The girl from Ipanema goes walking

Ipanema chopp

Copacabana sun

Copacabana chopp

Waiting for sunset

Night night Copa

We have spent the morning doing a walking tour of the central area learning about the foundations of Rio and also went to the Selaron steps where Snoop Dogg and Pharrell filmed 'Beautiful' (which I now can't stop singing!!)

Wha oh oh oh.....

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Beautiful, I just want you to know, you're my favourite girl

We also went to the Cathedral....it's like nothing you've seen before...all nasty concrete on the outside but lovely on the inside.

It looks like something from Doctor Who

Let there be light

Looking out from within

Yesterday we went to see Christ the Redeemer, which is fab... The little train ride up there is really steep with great views, and the view of Rio from the top is incredible, if you can push past all the other tourists!!

Let's see those maracas

The view

The people

The maracas again

Tomorrow the plan is to go up Sugarloaf mountain as it is our last full day of our trip before we fly back to the UK on Thursday eve....we can't believe we'll be home by the weekend, but, like a true Brit would say, it will be nice to have a good old cuppa.

Hope you all enjoyed the bank holiday...we've had 77 of them in a row. Whoop. Thanks for following us on our journey. Xx

Rio De Janeiro - home of the world's most helpful bus drivers

We made it to the big Christ thanks in no small part to a very nice bus driver who stopped and told us to get off the bus as well as all the passengers who were saying 'Christ' to us...we thought we had to go to the last bus stop but thankfully they knew otherwise..but the question is...how could they tell we were tourists?? Haha.

Jesus....he's big

Water, water everywhere....

....so the Ancient Mariner said, and that's exactly how it's been over the last two days. The Iguacu Falls have been spectacular and wet!!

We'll let the photos do most of the talking but as a quick summary....we went to the Brazilian side of the falls where you get fab panoramas, we also went to the bird park which was great....then today we've been to Argentina (as you do) to get up close and personal with the falls culminating in a frantic boat ride under the falls. Absolutely amazing.  Rio awaits. Love to all. Xx mwah.

PS. There is a blog from Timmy underneath this one too. Xx

A few supplies from the local supermarket

Maracas on the Brazil side

Just a couple of beers for two

Toucan play that game

Long John Silver is here somewhere

The Devil's throat

Big water

More big water

Keep your hands inside the ride

Scream if you wanna go faster

A leisurely boat ride

Wahoo!!!!

Yikes, a jaguar!

After a waterfall shower it's time for a real shower, but where did I put those towels?

Getting High

I'm writing this in La Paz airport which at 4200 metres above sea level is probably the highest airport in the world (I'm not entirely certain about this because the WiFi here is patchy at best and won't let me on to Wikipedia at the moment). Still, even if it's not the highest it's still pretty bloody high - higher than the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest point in Europe and it's also our very last taste of high altitude. 

In the last few weeks we've been above 5000 metres at least a couple of times, we've slept at over 4000m and on the Lares Trek we walked up to 4730. I even played football* against the lake Titikaka locals at 3800m. I was already out of breath after walking to the pitch, in fact I was out of breath after standing up well to be honest I was out of breath while I was sitting down. The lack of oxygen is the most immediate symptom of being up high, you feel dizzy if you stand up too quickly, walking across the room leaves you gasping for breath and if you play a game of five-a-side against a load of teenagers who have lived their whole lives at around 4000m you will end up rolling on the floor holding your chest while your face turns beetroot red and your heart pounds away at 200 bpm.     

Here's a quick round up of some of our high altitude highlights:
Puno
...or Poo Yes as we named it after coming in via it's unappealing suburbs

Traditional folk dance in Puno

Cusco - 3400m
...a great town only marred for me by a horrific bout of food poisoning

This is us hiding behind a rock on a day trip out from Cusco - after this we walked up a hill so we could get to 5000 metres above sea level. 5000 metres is bloody high let me tell you.

Lake Titicaca
...the largest navigable lake above 2000m in the world - note this picture was actually in a thermal spring near Chivay in Peru, with a classic South American regard for health and safety they will serve you a pisco sour in a glass while you swim in the water. 

Cocktails at 35 celcius with a whiff of rotten eggs (from the sulphur in the hot springs, not from my breakfast)

La Paz
...the biggest city in Bolivia, somehow La Paz manages to be both scary and boring at the same time 

Cholita traffic control

La Paz express dog delivery service

These things were all over La Paz, it's some kind of warning to thieves operating in the area

Salar de Uyuni
...it's 4000m above sea level, minus 14 celcius in the sun and has toxic lakes of arsenic and borax, what's not to love?

Kate getting into the spirit of things in the desert 

Arequipa - 2500m
...Peru's second biggest city with a lovely plaza at its centre as shown in this photo taken shortly before we dressed up in ponchos and downed a few pisco sours. Earlier that day we had a coffee and what I like to call "Nun's Buns" - squidgy cakes made by the sisters of the monasterio de Santa Catalina

Araquipa catedral at sunset

Colca Canyon
...bigger than the Grand Canyon with condors flying so low over your head that you think you might actually get a decent picture of one of them

A condor at Colca Canyon

*Yes you read that correctly, I played football. I wasn't sure if I could remember the rules to start off with but it all came back to me after a few minutes. You either chase the ball around or if it's too far away you shout and wave your hands around and pretend that you want someone to send the ball over to you. Every time someone misses the goal you all say Oooooo! and look sad, and whenever ball goes in the goalbag you say Yay! and smack whoever touched it last on the back.  

RAIN

Crikey....we are off to see the Iguacu Falls this morning and despite the rainy season finishing a month ago we have had a MASSIVE thunderstorm and the rains have lasted all night and are still going strong now.  Hopefully this means the falls will be quite impressive....good job we've got the waterproofs.  Have a good day everyone. Xx

Salty goodness

Hi everyone...we are now back in Lima, after spending time in Bolivia before we head to Iguassu falls.

Tim at the Spanish Inquisition

The end of our Peru tour was in a place called Puno based near Lake Titikaka. Yes, we tried the guinea pig...it tasted a bit like chicken but was really fatty...thankfully I never had one as a pet when I was a kid!!

One tasty guinea pig please

We spent time on the floating islands on the lake where people actually live - I didn't ask about the toilet situation but I can only imagine!!!. The islands are made out of reeds that grow in the lake fact fans, and they last about 25 years before they need topping up. We then got back on our motor boat to make our way to our homestay. Just as we were in the middle of nowhere looking at the lake glistening with no one else around,the boat shuddered and then stopped. Yowzers. The engine had failed so we were floating in silence for a while...about 30 mins later we set off again as they managed to fix it.
We arrived at the island where we would spend the night with a family...but first a game of football against the locals...it was soooo hard running at that altitude as we were thousands of metres above sea level. Phew. Next, the dancing....we all had to get into the traditional costumes. We watched the locals first then it was our go...it was hilarious.  Finally we went to our family's house. Our host was Victor and his wife and two kids...their son was called David and was eight....we had bought them some supplies in Puno and a rubiks cube for the kids...the whole family loved it - my Spanish wasn't good enough to tell them to take the stickers off and put all the colours together like I used to do...haha.  We had dinner with them and had our own room to sleep in.  The next morning we helped them with their farming and with two tiny scythes we proceeded to harvest a whole broad bean field....it was hard work but the view and the tranquility of the island in the sun really helped.  Upon leaving the island the boat broke down again and had to radio another boat to come and get us.

Dancing Peru stylee

The broad bean harvesting tools

Our kind host, Victor

Victor's kitchen

Hard at work

The beautiful lake

 The next day was Ellie's birthday, one of the girls in our group, and we were headed on a six hour bus ride to Bolivia.  Well the border crossing was very interesting...it took place in a market over a bridge...one side was Peru and across the bridge was Bolivia....through the hustle and bustle of the market we found Bolivian immigration once we were off the coach.  We had to queue and there were puddles of dark brown liquid on the floor which stank and even a dead pigeon to go with it...shops that just seemed to sell Coke (the drink, not the drug) and mangy dogs chasing a bitch in heat so they were fighting with each other (I cowered in the corner!!)...A couple of times they even made their way into the immigration office where there was also a beggar woman...Welcome to Bolivia!!

At the Bolivian border

Strict border entry controls

As we continued to La Paz the state of poverty was quite striking and the number of unfinished buildings was staggering.  We didn't take to La Paz much...it was soooooo hectic.  It was our final night with the tour group though and with Ellie's birthday too a big night out was in order.  Our guide, Johnathon, had sorted a cake when were in the restaurant, then we went to the Wild Rover hostel which was total carnage....free shots at the bar and happy hours at different times during the night...happy days.

Wild Rover fun

The next day the Death Road faced us.....we left at 8am and climbed up way past 4000m above sea level into the snow capped mountains.  We were given our safety gear, helmets and bikes and off we went.  We cycled over 60km and went down to 1300m above sea level so it was really steep with very tight bends.  We went from 7 degrees temperature to 30 at the bottom in the jungle...it was really hot and sticky.  One of our party came off his bike but thankfully only had cuts and bruises.

Death road survivors

Our next adventure was to the infamous salt flats.  We flew to Uyuni, our starting point for our 4x4 trip.  What a totally awesome place...we went on the flats and took crazy photos, stayed in a very cold salt hostel, went into the desert, saw moonscape rock formations, saw lava rock formations, went inside a semi active volcano crater and saw the 100 degree mud bubbling away, and the highlight was spending time in a natural outdoor thermal pool at night, next to our very basic dorm lodging (with no running water and two drop pit toilets for about 40 people!!), when it was minus 10 outside, looking at the stars which were sooooo amazing and seeing the milky way, then watching the moon rise, which is something that neither of us had experienced before...it was truly awesome.

Putting the boot in

Salty snack?

Maracas on the salt flats

The best sized wine bottle

Chilly salty hostel

Yikes....a live volcano

And on that note it is time to sign off until our Brazilian travels...our last country to visit during Project Maracas....hasta luego. xx