Mosquitoes & Coconuts: Speedy Catch Up

We've been in Brasil for nearly 6 weeks and it took 3 days of bad weather and excellent wifi in Trancoso to kick start this blog. This first post will be wordy, because there's a lot to catch up on....but I promise those following will be much shorter.

We arrived in Buenos Aires at the end of June - freezing - left immediately on an overnight bus to Iguazu Falls. Overnight buses have come to rival mosquitoes as my least favourite part of this trip. Currently mosquitoes are winning but one more broken toilet, vomiting kid or stolen bag and I'll be changing my blog's name to Buses and Coconuts. Lots of negative ions in the air make people at Iguazu Falls happy. So happy they forget the 20 hours spent on a grimy bus to get here and the resulting cankles and they just thoroughly enjoy the hugely impressive falls. Equally brilliant from the viewpoints in Argentina (up close) and Brasil (from afar).

Iguazu from the Brazilian side

Next stop, the Pantanal. Lots of wildlife, mostly birds and caiman (friendly crocodiles), but we managed to spot jaguars, an anteater, river otters, monkeys, deer and even a toucan. We fished for and caught some piranhas, we rode horses (which I think amounted to animal cruelty) but if I woke up and didn't know where I was, I would say Australia - very similar landscape, vegetation etc so after Iguazu set the bar so high, we weren't blown away. NB no negative ions.

Bird getting out of there

Piranha!

After the Pantanal we headed for the coast. We overnight bused it for 52 hours, cankles became elephantitis and finally we reached Sao Luis. SL is a nice colonial town but really for us it was the gateway to Lencois National Park. Dunes here are filled with freshwater lakes from March to September and I've wanted to visit ever since I saw Ernie Dingo on The Great Outdoors splashing around in this surreal spot. Brilliant.

One of 100 Lencois photos

We travelled down the coast from Barreirinhas to Praia de Pipa. Pipa is now what Byron Bay was 20 years ago. I really liked it here, we swam with dolphins, walked a lot and for the first time in a long time, sunbaked.

Praia de Pipa - Dolphin Bay

After Pipa we stopped in Jacuma, Olinda, Maragogi, Salvador, Itacare and now we are in Trancoso. As we've headed south we've noticed things become more organised, more developed, more expensive, perhaps less friendly and there are definitely more tourists. Up until now we've had brilliant weather and we've spent lots of time on the beach, Aaron practises yoga whilst I sip down as many coconuts as the daily budget allows for. Against my previous statements to the contrary I now own/wear a semi-Brazilian bikini (there is a range of coverage here) and soon I won't be the whitest person on the beach.