A Very Big Trip in a Very Special Bus - Afterword

TCHAU/CIAO/CHOW

Basically this is when we sent them packing in various states of disarray from the night before, with nothing for comfort apart from Brazilian radio (that´s right, Johnboy also didn´t bring his I-Pod charger!)

Goodbye, goodbye...tchau tchau chicos, it has been amazing and we already can´t wait to see you again. More thank you´s than you can ever imagine! xxxx

Day 21 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

DAY OF THE DEAD

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Number of home-made Caipirinhas: too many!

Number of surprise birthdays: 1

Number of shops open in which to buy said surprise birthday things: 0

Today is a kindof bank holiday, Remembrance Day at home, Day of the Dead here! And it was in fact pretty dead around town. All the shops were shut in the AM which foiled mine and Vikki´s plan to buy things for Lisa´s early birthday party which we planned to hold that evening. Also meant all we couldn´t get all the souvenirs we were hoping to get.

Instead we headed to Ipanema Beach to get sunburnt, swim, drink beer, buy overly expensive ice creams, sarongs, corn on the cob, lot´s o´water please and some tasteless prawn cracker-y-esque tasteless things. When we were all sufficiently pink enough we headed back to see if the shops had open. Fortunately some had so it was full steam ahead to try and lose Lisa (in the nicest possible way) and buy stuff.

In our quitet time wisdom John decided that we should definitely try and make our own Caipirinhas. One can of pure Caipirinha alcohol (Cachaca run) was about 50p...we got about eight. It was definitely enough to send us over the edge before we evn left the hostel to go out that evening! Our first attempt looked a lot like pond water, which we drank in true pikey fashion! Enter Angela with the magic fingers (and the correct sugar) who shows us how it is done. Then we had Lisa´s surprise birthday, with singing and guitars and cake. And then to the streets of Lapa and maybe some Samba!

We lost Kit not long after this, it´s just like being at uni again! He went home or something :)

Day 20 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

THE COW PARADE

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!!

Number of kms cycled: 7.5

Number of times Amy kissed Christ: 1

Today we ended up `spending some time apart´, its all for the good of the relationship in the long run kids! Amy, me, Lisa and John went to the lake, Vikki went on a woodland walk and Kit went bodyboarding in Sao Paulo or somewhere equally as far away.

In 38 degrees of heat we show up in Ipanema, hire a few bikes and WALK to the lake...still not convinced about the traffic in Rio. Every corner we turned there was some helpful guide to point us in the right direction, we must have been looking a little lost/a little out of place. We eventually got the lake after standing for what felt like 7 years at the traffic lights, suncreamed us up, and got on our bikes. We cycled, drank not enough water, put on not enough sun cream, found some more cows, found some potentially dead tramps...all in all it was much fun.

Back to Botafogo for some much needed showers and resting before heading up the Christ. We waited at the wrong bus stop for a long time but eventually made it there just in time to see Vikki leaving! The sun was almost setting which was lovely and meant we had to get the last train back down the mount...we ended up in a carriage with a school trip and the kids thought it was funny to take photos of us "without us knowing", Lisa foiled their plan and then they thought it was funny to take photos of us "with us knowing"!

I had a headache and went to bed...maybe one of the others can fill you in on the details of their evening out...the air con is working now by the way so maybe we will actually get some sleep as opposed to just sweating away our body weight.

Day 19 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

HER NAME WAS LOLA

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!!!!!

Number of Itinerary items successfully completed: 4

Our first stop on the Grand Rio Tour was St Theresa and the unmissable little train journey. We navigated the very jolty metro and squeezed onto the tram. We think if you hung off the side you got to ride for free but what with all the sheer drops and crazy Brazialian bus drivers we weren´t feeling too confident.

We strolled and took in the view and had a beverage at Mike´s Hauss and then decided to head back down the mountain when we reached the edge of the favella. Then to the shopping centre so Amy and I could start our Grand Tour of the Food Court and then we headed to the Sugarloaf. It´s a good job we ordered a large cloud positioned right on top of the mount because that is what we got. The views, when the clouds parted for seconds at a time, were tremendous....our Look Before You Click philosophy had to be set aside for the sake of Flickr!

It was all very eerie which fitted in nicely with it being halloween.

That night we headed off to the Macarena (Maracena) stadium, the largest in the world don´t you know and watched our home team (The Flamengos/O Meu Mengos) vs the Sao Paulo Corinthians . The traffic was intense, sit down, stand up, the atmosphere was incredible, sit down, stand up, and despite the supporters throwing bottles at each other´s heads for seemingly no good reason, sit down, stand up, it was all very well spirited. Sit Down. Stand Up. We also were lucky enough to be sitting behind a man with the hairiest back you have ever seen. Our guide came to collect us a couple of minutes before the end of the match which we were all very surprised about until the stampede of 100,000 came pounding past us. It was drive-by jump in the van and away we went.

Since we are obviously still made of money we walked past all the plastic-pre-school-tabled-bars on the street and headed for the one with valet parking! You get a ticket, the waiter marks on it what you have, you get your drink, you give the waiter your ticket, you give the waiter some money, he decides whether or not you deserve change and how much, he gives you back the ticket, you give the ticket to the door-person to get out. A bit of a roundabout way of serving people to say the least with the added bonus of (men) being groped by transvestites when you go to the bathroom.

Day 18 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

"HOW HARD CAN IT BE??"

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 6

Number of MacD´s: one each please (they don´t do breakfast you know!)

Kit´s dreams finally came true and MacDs was on the menu for breakfast and off we set for Rio...for the first time ever it was almost a race (amongst us girls) to get in the sixth `nomination´ seat which is small and spaceless and luggage falls on you continuously...but in this case (as we head into Rio...city driving...no road signs...a really vague map...) it is the seat furthest away from the Navigators seat! Johnboy stepped up to the task full of optimism...we all keep quiet! Until Westlife came on of course and then we `serenaded´! Although the "one skip a day" rule went out the window at that point...we think Kit and John may have been having some issues that not even Mandy could help with.

After driving in the wrong direction down a one-way street we found the hostel and what we thought was a friendly gentleman´s garage to leave the special bus in. We were slightly alarmed by the 10´ bunk beds with three beds but soon got over that when we realised none of us would have to scale the heights of the room to go to bed at night. There was another reason none of us were particularly keen to sleep on the very top bunk and that was because of the attractive pair of gold undies we found up there....s´niice!

We ate sandwiches for dinner and realised maybe our portuguese skills hadn´t come as far as we´d hoped when we nearly ended up with four beers instead of the cheque!

Day 17 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

BANHEIROS BANHEIROS BANHEIROS

Number of funny bathroom stories: 1

Number of times we missed the clocks changing: 1

Number of hours in the car: 9

In the absence of a boat trip which as far as we could tell was the only reason to visit the town in the first place, we hounded Pablo at the tourist information for most of the morning and checked out the one archealogicalarchitectural wonder of Caravan that was the pink church.

We formed a new plan, let's get out of this town and head to Rio. We managed to get to Campos and ended up staying in what could have been a drive-in sex motel. Luckily MacD's was shut so we ended up eating at Mama Zaps (Crepe heaven), mmm, I'll have two please! Sometimes having a maths degree isn't overly useful, like when I counted the money we owed and then the waiter chased us down the street because it was in fact the wrong amount!

I think this was the day we finally got a clue about the petrol station toilet system where you go and collect a key for the door and take it back when you are done...instead of finding the door locked so you test the male toilets and when they appear to be open, creep in, in the hope of going to the bathroom undetected but then realising there is indeed a man in there and run screaming from the toilet!!

Day 16 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

BANCO DO BRAZIL ANYONE?!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 8

Number of cockroaches killed: 1

Caravan here we come! We take the morning off to shop, sleep in, board and swim and eventually set off at 12 o clock. The route was pretty straight forward aside from the drive through Itabuna with once again a distinct lack of road signs. We ended up asking in a petrol station which proved a little more complicated than we would have hoped and they organised for a man on a motorbike to escort us out of the city to the road we were looking for! Genius.

Anyone up for a game of Troixieme Faixa?? How about a made-up letter game or a made-up word game?

We got to Caravan (Caravellas) and checked in to the 'best' hostel there was...with dirty sheets and cockroaches and six new complaining or screaming guests!

Day 15 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

SIX PEOPLE, NINE BEDS

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0!!

The lack of sleep did not however deter us from getting up at 9am and heading to the beach where I spent most of the day hibernating from the sun. The beach was beautiful and we met a couple of Itacarian kids, Lucas and Gabriel who were very entertaining until they asked for some dinheiro for their time. We would have tested out the waterproofness of John's camera had he not left the charger behind (in the UK behind)!!

We went out for some more pizza in the evening and the waitress kept trying to set Kit on fire! He had a burning lychee with his cocktail but it never quite made it to the table in tact which the waitress thought was hilarious. Turns out the lychee was actually cotton wool and slightly less edible than we first thought.

Despite the abundance of beds, Amy and Vikki managed to get locked out of the hostel and since scaling the wall was out of the question they had to book into another hostel for the night...d'oh.

Day 14 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

VIKKI - FOCUS ON THE HEADREST!

Number of pot holes: a brazilian trillion

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 8

We took the morning off from the Special Bus since we only planned to do a few hours in the afternoon. We all went to the beach and although we went to different beaches, just call us Sunburn R´Us...Weatherman John didn´t even see the need to take his suncream to the beach that day even though the forecast was 30 degrees + :)

Lei and I managed to pur-chase lunch for six people for $R9.

First part of the journey is once again ok and we are happily lulled into a false sens of security. Just about then we hit the 50km long dirt track with pot holes in every which way of every different shape size depth...it was getting dark, there was long grass on either side of the road...I was expectiong men donned with loin cloths to jump out and attack us with spears, Lisa saw a lion (cow) and Amy was mistaking wooden poles for African Voodoo statues!

I am not sure how we went the right way since there were many forks in the road and very few (i.e. none) road signs, even the games weren't helping us this night. We came across a broken down bus...an omen you might think?! Then we got a puncture. Luckily, Lei-the-car-mechanics-for-girls-queen was there to rescue us, although I am not sure she would have been so forthcoming with the aid has the stray dog actually carried out it's threat and peed on the flat tyre we were attempting to change! Imagine, only 6km to go till we get to tarmac! Some ramdom man appeared as if from nowhere to offer his help which we skeptically declined, and the AA van equivalent was totally confused by us when they drove by obviously in search of the coach that had called them..."I thought they said it was a bus"! Fortunately you can't outfox the fox and we were back on the road in no time at all.

Next obstacle...can you guess what it is yet?? That's right we are now on the verge of running out of petrol! This really wouldn't be the place to do it either. We made it to the tarmac and think we have just enough petrol to get us to the town, whether or not that means the petrol station in the town we have no idea! Now is not the time to be wasting petrol, so what do we do? Drive the wrong way down a dead end roadwork site! D'oh.

In the name of saving petrol kit and John get out and go and check if there is anyway through to the town...this could have been directed by Wes Craven himself...it's about 11pm, dark and just as Kit and John disappear over the hill to the left hand side of the bus a strangely out of place figure appears on the horizon to the right of the bus. With four girls left in the car to deal, there is obvious dismay/concern/sheer panic! And this would be the point in the movie when the girl veers off the main well-lit road and into a dark dead end alley...Amy leans into the front to switch the ignition on to close the window and lock the door...at this point we have opted for shutting ourselves in the car and hoping for the best...she gets the window shut and accidentally puts the hazard lights on...HELLO STRANGE MAN, WE ARE OVER HERE!! Just as we compose ourselves and the man is about 50m from the bus, Kit and John start heading back towards the car, they can't see the man, the man can't see them and we are in panic mode once again. They meet in the middle and difuse the situation - turns out he is the roadwork sight night porter and informed us we had indeed gone the wrong way and the town is 9km away.

WILL THE GROUP MAKE THE 9KM TO THE TOWN? WILL THEY RUN OUT OF PETROL BEFORE THEN AND BE STRANDED? WOULD THE CHEAP VODKA BE A GOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR PETROL? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO FIND OUT....

(Next week) Heaven sent another angel and we made it to the town, to the petrol station which was looking suspiciously shut until a man appeared from a parked car and gave us some petrol...it was a little expnsive though so we didn;t get very much ;) It is now midnight and we still have nowhere to stay and haven't eaten for another 8 hours. We found a hostel and totally confused the man who was working,musical rooms ensued and we went from having two room swith five beds to three rooms with seven beds and the man was wandering between us looking for 'the one who spoke portuguese', that would be none of us dude! Anyway, since I think he was only expecting 5 of us we got it for $R100, our best price yet!

We went out to find some food (not holding out too much hope), Amy nearly fell down a man hole and a man who was innocently walking along hissed at a cat to scare it and ended up making all of us jump as well! Itacare turned out to be fairly closed but we did manage to find a pizza place which was willing to serve us despite our weary/stinky appearance! We eventually got to bed at 4am...what a day!

Day 13 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

LISA MAKES A JOKE

Number of ice creams: 5

Since we a living in the land before clocks we all managed to get up and ready for 7am without realising! Today´s plan is to visit Salvador although Kit went decided to abstain from the procedings and go body boarding...what? You have had enough of us already, I find that hard to believe :) So let´s say PraÇa De Se at 1700 hours?!

We navigated the public buses and luckily with our quick-slimming-14-stone-in-a-day diet we had no problem fitting through the turnstiles made for those token anorexic big bums that the Brazilian ladies have.

We discovered the city on foot, thankful to not be in the bus for a day. Cobbled streets, beautiful churches, the old city (where the cemetary was), Jorge the military policeman who regaled us with his heartwarming stories of how he hates Americans, once we had regaled him with our stories of not being American of course!

Despite rising fears we did manage to meet Kit at the arranged spot almost at the arranged time which gave us plenty of opportunity to scope out the weirdos in the bus station...it´s the same wherever you go! Oh, and we found the best ever ice cream shop in the world ever with the best ever banana ice cream ever (...one for the books there Madtin!) Once the gang were reunited we headed to Sao Francisco church, which was stunning aside from the angel statues with bulbous heads and deformed faces. It took 27 years to complete all the gold guilding.

We went to a bar then to a restaurant where Johnboy got a portuguese pronunciation lesson from the waiters...it must have been that french in a day tape you listened to before you came to the portuguese speaking country of Brazil that confused them Mr :)

On the way home we spent a significant amount of time bartering with the taxi driver over $R2 and ended up giving it to him in tip for his boy racer impression when he blared Sting´s I´ll Be Missing You (portuguese style) whilst driving us home.

Day 12 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

FIRST RULE OF THE SPECIAL BUS; DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE SPECIAL BUS

Number of hours in the Special Bus: I didn't realise this wasn't a driving day

Number of hours of sunshine left by the time we got to the beach: 1/2

Number of times almost ran out of petrol: 1

Number of funny bathroom stories: 1

Despite the smell in the room we did get fried eggs for breakfast and with John in our midst it is definitely a new day! First things first we need to move to a more suitable hostel in a more suitable area. This didn't take all that long and John eventually got over the trauma of being shot at (or the car backfiring, depending on where you were sitting). We decided to avoid the City Centre again and opted for a place by the beach.

Once we had driven all the way back towards town, we then drove all the way back out to where we had come from to go to a beach near there. In true Special Bus Style we drove past every potential food joint till we were in the back of beyond where there was very few places to get food or petrol...that's right folks, we almost ran out of petrol...AGAIN! Add a wander to the lighthouse to the equation and we arrived at the beach (our only ain for the day) at about 5pm.

Juan Chico the space saving genius brought with him three flannels instead of one towel...thank goodness he did though, it was enough of a squeeze without a sixth full-sized towel thrown in the mix.

It has been 12 days and I think we have finally mastered the art of ordering three meals and sharing them between the lot of us (as opposed to ordering six meals and wondering why everyone looks at us a little strangely and why we end up with enough food to feed an small third world country!) John has also managed to figure out where the men's bathroom is :) To be fair the sign was a bit vague! Speaking of the toilets, they barely allow enough room to swing an ant let alone sit comfortably on the toilet without your knees scrubbing the back of the door!

After a few much needed Caipirinhas, we are ready for our much overdue wandering the streets of a city we don't know looking for somewhere to go, lo and behold there isn't anywhere suitable and we end up going back to the hostel for some cheap cheap vodka and a little Brady-Bunch-esque sing-a-long!

Day 11 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

D-DAY IV - WHAT A DAY!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: Once again a lot more than we had envisaged

Mosquito bite status: Lisa has been bitten on the eye

Weight-loss: 14 stone, IN A DAY!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 14

Hopes are high as we set off to Salvador and I may even use the word excited. 650km left on ONE relatively straight road with few pot-holes. Today´s Special Bus time is spent making The `The´ List of bands. We ran out of money pretty early on in the day which made buying the essentials - lunch and petrol pretty difficult.

Fortunately, the moment when we ran out of petrol was exactly the moment we pulled into a petrol forecourt (only a little pushing was required).

Unfortunately, `Do you take Visa?´, `No´, `Parlez-vous français?´, `No´. The kindly gentleman said he would take our U$S for some petrol, although in hindsight I think this was maybe preferable to having five foreigners and their Special Bus camped out at his petrol station for the rest of the day! Let´s just hope we don´t have to bribe any policemen in the hour...optimism is once again rising.

TASK 1: FIND A HOSTEL AND SOME MONEY AND MACD´S

Falsely hopefully we enter the mindboggling one way system that is Salvador city centre. Another clock change means that we have 3.5 hours to complete our task and get to the airport to collect Johnboy, no worried maate.

3 hours later we have no hostel, no money and no Macd´s...to clarify, that is no food since 7am and it is now 9pm. We abandon task 1 and head to the airport to collect John. We all hate Salvador.

Task 2: FIND JUAN CHICO

Another hour of sitting in Arrivals, with no sign of a flight from Amsterdam on the agenda we start to wonder if we have in fact got the right day/time/airport/city...by today´s standards anything is possible.

In truth John arrived on an internal flight from Sao Paulo airport and was in the domestic arrivals as opposed to the international arrivals where we were. After 18 months, 28 days and 9.5 hours we are reunited!

Task 3: GET SIX PEOPLE, SIX PIECES OF LUGGAGE, ONE BODYBOARD AND ONE GUITAR IN A SPECIAL BUS

We were hoping to not have to tackle this task until we left Salvador but since the last few hours hadn´t really gone to plan it wasn´t much of a surprise that we were here. Instead after 14 hours in the bus, no food and nowhere to go we managed to squeeze everyone in, just!

Task 4: TO MACD´S

It´s shut.

Task 5: FIND THE POUSADA

Another supposed easy task, especially with maps and directions BUT NO! We end up driving round the suburb confused by the directions and the map. We seem to have landed in the red light district/Habib's fan base area and only managed to find the place thanks to some kindly Habib-er. Then we arrive to find that our room stinks of pee...nice!

Task 6: GET SOME MUCH NEEDED FOOD

The next hour doesn't really bare mentioning, all you need to know is that we went to bed hungry!

Day 10 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

D-DAY III - TROUBLE OVER BILL´S MOTHERS

Mosquito bite status: high although we are not sure what changed!

Actual Mosquito bites: quite a few, Vikki has her first bite of the holiday - welcome to the club!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 13

Number of hours Kit drove: probably 12.5

I think we gave the hostel hostess the wrong impression yesterday with our late rising since today we plan to leave as early as possible and thus have to do so without breakfast, we drove past the lady with our breakfast on the way out of town!

Mission to get as close to Salvador as possible. With only one minor detour down a `scenic´ road (dirt track through a wood) and one major hailstorm when I thought the windscreen may actually break we managed find a Pousada (of the Parrot kind) on the main road. And have actually made a significant dent in the kilometres! I think our/Vikki´s negotiation skills improve after a frustratingly long time in the car and she managed to bargain the man down to $R125 for a room for five!

We ate some more pizza (this time of the microwaveable kind) and drank some more cerveja and were about ready for bed...we know how to live the high life!

Day 9 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

PLEASE SIR, CAN I HAVE SOME MORE?

Number of hours in the car: More than we had hoped

Mosquito bite status: low

We have our first real lay-in of the holiday and still manage to get breakfast...although our lovely hostess didn´t have any other guests to cater for so I guess there wasn`t much else to do with the food.

We visited the Secret Garden expecting a woodland walk and found a jungle-style obstacle course from the Krypton Factor and totally not suitable for our flip-flopped feet. We lost Kit and Vikki to that well-known artist Oscar who had no faith in our abilities to get to Salvador in two days! In the afternoon we decided to go to the much talked about (by guide books) and much advertised (by leaflets) Agua Santos. Surprisingly this attraction was not signposted AT ALL and we had to stop and ask many-a-random for directions (because we love to be reminded how much of the language we cannot speak!), we arrived just in time to catch Mr Incredible, Miss Sunburn Brazil 2007, some well-practiced strutting by some (what we can only imagine are) regulars and Juan, Amy´s new man :) Basically it was a swimming pool.

Unfortunately Tiradentes closes up on a Sunday night so we were stuck with fast food of sorts but in the next level price bracket...for what I can only assume was the plate and cutlery hire. They love their cheese, especially of the plastic kind and Vikki ended up with a feast of plastic cheese omlette with a lettuce leaf and not one but two slices of tomato...mmmm!

Day 8 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

NOT MEANT TO BE A D-DAY II.I - FOR EVERYTHING ELSE THERE´S YELLOW PAGES!

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 5

Number of times we lost the car key: 1

The instuctions failed in the first two minutes, over to the Yellow Pages Maps which get us to what seems like the one and only sign for the 65 in the whole of the town.

Five hours later we arrive in Tiradentes and the 1900´s which cobbled streets, horse and carts, cows randomly strolling down the road, ATM´s that don´t accept anyone´s card apart from Amy´s, steam trains and secret gardens. We find our hostel which requires either the tourist information or a neighbour to telephone to, to get their attention...knocking on the door the old fashioned way does not do the trick. We check in and have fast forwarded to the 70´s with green and pink tiled walls, a bright red fridge, a bright yellow freezer, lights that get brighter when you switch the shower on...retro huh!

For dinner we try and find the Italian restaurant, Vik is in charge of the map so put your walking shoes on folks ;) turns out to be a little too expensive for our tastes and we head back to the main square. We end up in a bar...in THE bar and get kicked out at some unreasonably early hour because they want to close...! Duschbags!

Day 7 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

D-DAY II - WHO IS ROGER BANNISTER?

Number of hours in the car: 12

Number of hours lost: 7

Number of funny toilet stories: 1

Another debate I am not allowed to mention is the `Shall we bypass Sao Paulo completely on our drive today?`...moving on (but definitely coming back to it later) we made really good time in the morning and had a comedy moment when Lei got stuck in a public Brazilian toilet! We are talking comedy sketch moment when the handle comes away in one hand and you hear the other half fall to the ground...luckily us girls always go to the bathroom together and did so for the rest of the trip after this incident, so we were all able to come to the rescue and take photos and laugh! It was looking like our options were to pull Lei over the wall or leave her there until Vikki the Door Fixing Genius had a go.

It was funny but not funny enough to get us through the next seven hours of driving around 1/8 of a page of the map looking for route 65. We hate Route 65. We ended up in Campinas (not even close to where we wanted to be), in an expensive hotel with some people patient enough to try and give us directions and with yellow pages - out of which we stole the local maps FOR THE GOOD OF OUR SANITY! Everyday´s a school day and we find out that although roads are marked as numbers on the maps, they usually are signposted as names - we have in fact been looking for the Dom Pedro Road this whole time and just not knowing it - probably drove past it a fair few times too :( In the words of Pink, Who Knew?

Day 6 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

DRIVING DAY I - EVERY POTHOLE HAS A DIFFERENT STORY

Number of hours in car: 11

Number of potholes driven over: thousands

Number of arguments over animal, mineral, vegetable: at least one per game

Today is the shortest distance we have to cover - 650km, we are heading to Morettes. The game of the day is Animal, Mineral, Vegetable AKA Janet Jackson/Harold Bishop, Bridges, Maracuja. Is a bridge a building? Is a bridge a structure? Is a building different to a structure?

We think we are driving over the worst roads EVER...(see Days 7-21) and it takes us 11 hours, d`oh. Have we bitten off more than we can chew? i find it hard to believe when we are five poeple who have been limited to a diet of cheesey and salty snacks for the last five days!

We spy the road to Morettes which is signposted very vaguely and only once - it takes us down and around a mountain on cobbles for about 20km - Amy feels sick, even the scenery cannot help. What does help is our 5* dinner with Mr Chipolopodous at his lovely restaurant and the oh-so kind people at the hostel we are staying in. Vikki gets her own specially made fish dish for one...well, this might be the last time she gets to eat you know! :)

Day 5 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

DUSCHCO DUSCHBAG

Number of hours in the Special Bus: 0

Number of arguments over the Janet Jackson/Harold Bishop game: 1

Number of countries visited: 2

We are off to Argentina to check out the other side of the Falls. We are on a tour and all cram into the minibus with the overly pervy bus driver who seems quite keen to leave all the chicos behind. Luckily Kitty morphs quite well into a squirly after the last four days!

We left Brazil and entered Argentina - yay a whole country away from the Special Bus! Santana became a topic of heated debate along the way although I am pretty sure I am not supposed to bring it up again?! Apologies :) We had a truck ride and a boat ride and hopes were high that we were going to see some Toucans. Sadly no, but the boat ride made up for it somewhat when it took us through the falls, under the falls, round the falls, over the falls and we ended up absolutely drenched...thank goodness for the sunshine that day! Even though it was like being sprayed with a hosepipe and I feel I had my eyes shut for most of the time...it was still amazing!

The rest of the day we walked and the sights just kept getting better and better! Although, my boots are clearly NOT made for walking...since they broke. It was a tiring day so we ended it with dinner and some sort of impromptu planning session on how to get to Salvador...in four days, surely not?!?

Day 4 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

¨KIT I AM LUCKY IF I EVEN HIT THE BALL LET`S NOT GET INTO THE RULES¨ Vikki Re: A table tennis match

Number of hours in the car: 1 more than we hoped

Number of ice creams: 1

Contents: Five people, 4.5 bags, one body board and one guitar

Today we are visiting the Iguaçu Falls on the Brazilian side. The day starts out raining but our tight schedule does not allow us the luxury of waiting around for good weather, we are especially looking forward to the open top bus ride!

So after the naked conga in the shower we head out to the Special Bus and down to the park. The unprepared of the group pur-chase their moomin style, very fetching rainmacks and we get the bus (thankfully closed top) up to the Falls - an awe-inspiring sight to say the least. The sun managed to show it´s face, as did Burt Raccoon and all the weird insects of Brazil. We got stuck with fast food for lunch since we were unwilling to spend $R30 on salad!

The late afternoon we spent trying to sightsee and went looking for the lake and the Dam. The Dam was shut and apparently would have cost us money had it been open?! and the road signs to the lake mysteriously disappeared somewhere on route - this is the new code for we got lost! Kit had time to p-p-p-pick up a guitar on the way back to the hostel (yay!) and we went for a dip in the pool, played some table tennis, ate more food and drank more Caipirinhas.

Day 3 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

PARKING TICKET ME UP PLEASE

Number of parking tickets: 1

Number of times we failed to realise the clocks had changed: 1

Number of hours in the car: Too many

The change of the clock completely bypassed us which meant we did not get an early start, we did not check out on time and we got a parking ticket - luckily it was only for $R8 which is the equivalent of 2 British Pounds. In the midst of all the excitement we almost lost Vikkis´s head in a car window accident.

We are heading to Foz Do Iguaçu which is in completely the opposite direction to where we want to be going but apparently well worth it...we arrive in the dark, we arrive in the rain and get stalked by a man on a motorbike who Lisa and I are convinced is a policeman ready to throw us in jail for not having much of a suntan, get your bribe money out kids! Turns out he is just a man trying to get tourists to go to his hotel! After two near misses we get to the hostel just in time for the all you can eat buffet and some much recommended Caipirinhas...Vikki assures us they are made from Rum made from sugarcane but we are not convinced is not alcool which has been sifoned from the Special Bus.

Day 2 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH JOHNNY WILKINSON

Number of hours in the car: Again, unrecorded so couldn´t have been too painful!

Number of times lost the car key: 1

Number of times nearly ran out of petrol: 1

The plan: Curitiba - the well-planned city

Some sterling reversing from Kit the Cat Man and we are back on the road. Next game please...´Songs with the word Rain in the title´, that´s right it is raining as we head to Curitiba, the well-planned city which turns out isn´t so well-planned afterall in light of everytime you want to go left, you cannot go left and instead have to turn right and head away from the very spot you are trying to get to.

Lucky my Dad taught me to pay attention when I was in the car because we somehow I managed to get us to this fancy looking hotel - this is the one yeah? this is the one in the budget section of our book yeah? Vikki the Negotiator worked her magic and landed us an entire suite with a shower as big as the entire bathroom we had in Santos, corridors, a bedroom AND reception rooms for almost half the price we paid in Santos! Santos Schmantos.

Rumour has it we get some sort of free coffee and snack at 6pm so off we trot...only to discover ´a snack´ is actually code for an all you can eat buffet of soup, bread, snadwiches, cake, fruit (I guess the All You Can Eat part depends on your conscience which I think I left mine in a free food basket in a hostel in Australia so...) At this point we start to contemplate if we are really getting such a good deal and is the price per person as opposed to per room??!! Hmmm! We discard these thoughts until later and go for a wander in the rain in search of some beer and wine. The lure of our luxury pad is too much so we get the drinks to takeaway in spite of the humour it caused all the staff and clientele at the cafe!

Kit teaches us a game called Scum, which to be honest still needs some clarification of the rules - but we did have fun ranking the five of us as King, Queen, Neutral, Scum and Kaiser Cheif Scum that night and for the rest of the holiday! Oh, and does anyone know Shakespeare´s surname?

Day 1 in the Big Brutha Special Bus

A JOURNEY OF SEVEN THOUSAND KILOMETRES BEGINS WITHOUT MUCH OF A CLUE

Contents: Five people, four and a half bags and one bodyboard
Number of times the car key has been lost: 1
Hours in the car: Obviously not a particularly shocking amount since I have no record of it
The plan: There isn`t one


The story begins in Sao Paulo airport where five friends reunite (Amy cries) and are introduced to the most special of special buses (Amy cries ;) which by all accounts runs on alcool (alcohol) and Kit has already scarred by driving into a curb - what they have curbs in Brazil?


Let the games begin - first up is the Janet Jackson/Harold Bishop game...a few rounds in and Kit throws us all off with his description of some half cat/half man character/from a tv show/and a book/there are four members of the gang/he has a feline name/it is from the 90s/he is not main character/actor was in a film after the tv show/BBC2/9pm...basically you cannot believe how long it took us to figure out that Kit was Cat from Red Dwarf! Let´s move onto game number two shall we? Interpretting Portuguese road signs - oh yep, that one definitely means they are strengthening the bridge. Luckily we arrived at Sao Vicente not long after this point and the game came to an end - the one thing the book did say was DO NOT STOP AT SAO VICENTE...I am pretty sure someone piped up at this point and said ¨Shall we stop?¨, a precursor to the rest of our trip if you like - ending up in situations that we have specifically been told not to do, but did we learn...Nao!


We find our chosen hostel in Santos which turns out to be very expensive for what we get...five beds in a small room with a tiny bathroom containing shower (electrics on display), toilet and sink with no divide so that one shower in it is a fight to not get soaked whenever you enter the room...a particular problem for us squirlies who had to squat over the toilet whilst hoiking the trouser legs up and pulling the trousers down and holding the toilet paper under the arm - I thought this was supposed to be a holiday!!


When we were all ready to move out we head to the streets of Santos and almost immediately get run over on the bike track running along the beach...oops! The first cafe we come to caters for groups of four people only (i.e. the tables), no vegetarian option and when you ask for water you either get a bottle that has been previously opened or fizzy when you wanted still - Parlez-vous francais? This may have been the moment it dawned on Vikki that she may actually be living of cheese Doritos for the next three weeks! We ended up in a typical Brazilian style restaurant where you pay by the kilo...this turned out to be one of our favourite lunchtime jaunts aside from the lack of tables for more than four people!


By this time it was quite late on but we managed to spend some time sat on the beach while Kit went boarding, then back to the squat for a planning session of sorts and oh, it must be time to eat again by now surely...Lei - did you leave any room for anything else¿? We wandered to the `Old City` named so because of the presence of a cemetary and we had some pizza at a particularly unfriendly restaurant who would not understand "pizza com atum"...with hand actions/pointing/phrase books and all?? I´ll just have the pizza with heaps of cheese then please, times five! We wouldnt have known if there was any tuna/other toppings on the pizzas even if we had been successful.

A Very Big Trip in a Very Special Bus - Foreword

First let me introduce the band - we have Kit on lead guitar and lead vocals (basically the charge of the group), Gem on practicing guitar and can therefore only participate in the one song, Lisa, Vikki and Amy on vocals (when Amy is asleep the others take over, when Lisa is peeing the others take over and when Vikki is flapping the others take over) and John on the triangle.


Just before we begin I would like to extend some advice for those thinking of visiting Brazíl; learn portuguese, do not bring more than four friends since their seating plans rarely cater for more than four seats round a table and prepare your stomach for an inundation of cheese!


¨When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable¨ Clifton Fadiman


It is not likely that the next lot of messages will embellish this quote but hindsight is a beautiful thing!