FAREWELL

OK that's it, our final entry on this blog site. 3 weary and tired looking faces at the end of 7 months travel through the wonderful South America. What an experience we have had together. We cant believe that its all come to an end so quickly and we are about to try and enter the real world again. Definitely not looking forward to that.
Hope you have all enjoyed seeing some pics and reading about some of our adventures, even though were pretty slack at updating it regularly.


Chou from the NZ 3 Amigos

RIO DE JANIERO

Well well well, here we are. Its Rio and were here for the biggest party in the World. A highlight we have all been looking forward to for so long.
Rio is such a flipping amazingly cool and extremely lively city. The Cariocas (Rio people) sure know how to party.
We are here during Carnival season and the city just never seems to sleep. Every night was another street party on just about every street corner in Rio. Saturday and Sunday we went to the parades which is just massive. For the parades they actually have a purpose built 1km long stadium like thing where the different Samba schools get to strut there stuff and show the world what they can do. The floats are absolutely huge and amazing as are the costumes and there must be a good 2 thousand people in each school if not more. After 3 nights of parading the winner is chosen and gets to strut there stuff again next week. There is only 6 schools a night and the party lasts from 9pm until 6am.
Some crazy late nights, lots of drumming and a bit of dancing has been our routine over the last weekend. What an experience.

The end of the km long stretch for the samba dancers. It takes 1hr and a half for the group to get through.

Some of the very extravagant and colorful floats. You spend hours in awe.

A group of guys dressed up as Lady and the Tramp for some street parties.

Sitting out on the rocks in between Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches.

Downtown on our way to another street party.

Up the Pao de Açucar ( Sugar Loaf mountain for those who don't speak Portuguese). Admiring the views from the top of this huge rock that over looks the whole city of Rio. Its such a spectacular view and Rio is a stunning looking city. We did go up to the Jesus statue hill which is even higher but we got up there and he wasn't there.... oh no, he was just hiding in the clouds.

The world famous Brazilian stairway. These are actually made by a Chilean artist and is an on going work. We felt privileged to walk up these stairs as the likes of Michael Jackson, U2, Pharrell, Snoop Doggy Dog and even Homer Simpson have all visited this stairway.

Copa, Copacabana.... Not the busiest day we saw but this is the busiest beach we have ever seen in our lives. I have never seen so many people at the beach at one time. The beach is huge and all you can see from end to end is umbrellas. Good luck trying to find a spot for 3 to sit. And Ipanema beach, just round the corner was just as jammed packed.

Some down time on Copacabana beach.

Hmm... Copacabana beach again. This walkway is all made from little chips of rock and stretches down the whole beach and throughout the city as well.

Undies, undies, undies....

BARRO DA LAGOA

Our first stop in Brazil and what a stop it was. Barro is a bay on the island Florianopolis in the south of Brazil. We were suppose to stay here for 2 days but ended up staying for a week cause we loved it so much. We had our own little apartment right on the estuary leading out to the beach. The estuary provided us with hours of fun as we would float back and forth from the beach to the apartment depending on the tide. Good times.

Our beach in Barro. Was generally pretty busy most days.

Floating down our estuary (except for Jarrod and Logan cant actually float). That's our apartment on the other side. Hahaha

TRINDADE

A tiny little beach and jungle town full of hippies and surfers. Much like Barro da Lagoa, we were only supposed to stay for 1 night but ended up staying for 4. How could we not though. We had a cool as little jungle hideaway owned by a french Canadian couple who live there 4 months of the year. What a life. The jungle lead down to an amazing beach. there was a bit of a jungle hike over a hill to one beach and then carry on a bit more and there is a massive natural rock pool. Reminded us heaps of some places in Colombia.

The view from our room. Logan wasn't always in the view though and it wasn't always on an angle either. This "creek" turned into a river on our second day when it absolutely poured all day with heavy "Jungle Rain".

Climbing round the rocks to get to our favorite beach.

The natural rock piscina.

IGUAÇU

After a teary farewell to Sam in Buenos Aires we headed up to the wonderful Iguaçu Falls to cheer ourselves up a bit.
What an amazing place, truly is one of the Wonders of the World. We spent the day cruising round in the sweltering heat admiring these beautiful gigantic waterfalls and only wishing we could jump in the water to cool ourselves down.
Standing over the falls you could probably throw a stone over and take out some Brazilians on the other side.
Iguaçu was our crossing point into Brazil.

Garganta del Diablo (the devils throat). A crazy amount of water is going over this edge. The mist from the bottom rose so high that from a distance we thought it was smoke. Wouldn't wanna fall in there.

This is Bob and us checking out some more amazing views at the falls. They stretch for miles.

What a lovely pose from these two hotties at the top of the Devils Throat.

Some crazy gringo making a dick of himself amoungst the hundreds of tourists, at the base of yet another fall.