Thorsten and Suzi 30/10//06

Safely landed in Brazil and enjoyed the last 2 days having a look round Sao Paulo. It is a really modern city, much more so than expected and the underground is fab. It´s air conditioned and the coaches are twice as wide as the tube so has been a pleasure riding round being as the temperature from the south of Chile to the coast of Brazil doubled overnight!! Our 13 dollar jackets served us really well in Patagonia and we´ll be hanging on to those for our landing in Heathrow, although hoping it won´t be too cold. Who needs North Face when you can have Peruvian "Challenge"!! We are enjoying the sunshine and are hoping we will have a bit of a tan to show off when we get back.

The city itself is not pretty but is easy to navigate and full of friendly locals, who are always ready to help a couple of lost tourists who can´t speak Portuguese. Have already noticed how much easier it was to travel in the rest of South America speaking some of the language. We´re completely back to hand signals and lots of smiling here!! We stayed in the Jardins area of Sao Paulo, close to Av. Paulista, which was really nice. Filled with trendy bars and cafes and on Sunday there was a huge outdoor street market stretching for about a km down the Avenieda which we enjoyed looking round. We also visited the cathedral which was actually finished in 1970 but modelled on 16th century churches so looks really old! Really reminded us of the cathedral in Trier, which does date fro the 16th century.

Overall have really enjoyed ourselves. However, with 15 million other inhabitants, and after spending so much time in the countryside, it´s a bit on the big side for us so we´re off to the countryside again! We are heading off in a minute to Igassu Falls and then will go up to Rio de Janeiro state for our last week on Saturday. Only downside is a 14 hour bus journey ahead of us to get to Igassu!

A quick update on the penguins to finish off our Patagonian adventure. We spent a very restful 2 days back in Punta Arenas before flying across to Brazil and decided to take part in one last activity, visiting the penguin colony on the Otway Sound. Was really really good. They are so cute and we watched them catching and eating fish (and battling with the seagulls to stop them stealing the fish straight from their mouths first!). chilling out and floating around on their backs in the water and waddling along in a line back home "to bed". They were lovely and would have taken one home if we could have. Just don´t think Reading is cold enough for them to be happy. Think they´d miss the Antarctic water temperature but definately rather them than us. It was freezing cold!

Overall we had a ball. On a personal note, we are extra happy we had such a good time as our South American trip did not start well with the loss of our rucsac, and we were so sad to have lost Thorsten´s passport and diary. Now, we go home with more good memories than bad an think that´s very important for when we look back on the trip as a whole. We are also starting to look forward to home now and definately looking forward to our duvet. We actually watched a random movie, whose name I can´t even remember, in Punta Arenas and a golden retriever had to be put down as part of the story. I haven´t cried so much in ages so I think my subconscious is reminding me that home, and Bonny, are not too far away now!!

Off to dig out our hiking boots now ready for Igassu NP then will put the away and it´s sandals and shorts all the way in Rio. Thanks for the job suggestion Dkins but I think that the Canvey Island mountain rescue team is far too busy for us to be able to give the necessary commitment!!