29-31Jan- The 'Opolis's and a caravan of love

So, observations on Brazil so far.... It has the most beautiful, mountainous, lush landscapes, with all kinds of fruit along every road we travel down, bananas, avocado, mango, lime, bread fruit (phooey). The people are great, really fun and full of life and I have seen some cracking tattoos, especially in Rio and Parity. (Note for Terry, lots of Latin religious style tats, unsurprisingly).

Anyway, back to the route...we stopped off next in Petropolis (where the rich Rio folk used to holiday) and whilst crew food shopped, we escaped the rain with a visit to the Imperial family's museum. The visit was made all the better because we had to wear slippers over our shoes to protect the marble and wood floors......yes, we were ice skating through the rooms.

100km further on and we camped in Teresopolis. It was still all a bit soggy so a few of us chose to explore the upgrade option. Picture a few rickety caravans, the towable kind. We rejected one that had a line of ants marching about on the mattress (crew took this one later, after being seen entering the caravan with a large can of bug spray. 3 of us took one of the caravans for the princely sum of 5Reals per head.....about £1.70.

Anthony waving from his end of the caravan of love


We had a meaty BBQ and drank bubbly to mark the engagement of Kirsten and Pete (crew) at Ipanema beach in Rio last night (Hurrah!)

The happy couple


We set off again after our caravan night and the eery scenery of our arrival (mountains peaking out of a misty valley) was replaced with a huge, lush valley, with mountains as far as we could see. Gorgeous.









Next stop Ouro Preto, a gorgeous, cobbled street colonial town, similar to Parity but far more hilly. It pelted it down with rain and I legged it back to the campsite before any of the 23 churches re-opened in the afternoon. Oops.

See! We walked down this long, steep river....I mean road