Firstly, sorry for my slackness in getting this blog out. We´ve pretty much just been having too much fun to find a decent internet cafe, but have finally found one in our Hotel at Lima, where we´ll be celebrating new years eve later tonight.

So back to my story, while we were at Foz Iguazu in Brazil, we took the opportunity to pop 30 minutes over the border to Paraguay to visit the large markets there.   It´s hard to sum up the markets except to say that there are plenty of fakes, copies, genuines fakes, and fake fakes there.   For me the highlight was walking around with my hand in my pocket and glued to my wallet and crapping myself when we heard bulletshots.  This happened to Andrew (from NZ) and I 3 times in the 2 hrs.  The other funny thing is that Australians require a visa to enter Paraguay, but a few nods etc by our tour guide fro the day and we were in Paraguay within 30 minutes.       Lasting impression of Paraguay is rather dangerous and quite poor, but that is only based off the one small market experience.

Next Stop after Foz Iguazu was Ilha Do Mel, also known as Honey Island.   On Xmas Eve we headed by coach for 3 or 4 hours up to the port and took a short ferry across to Ilha Do Mel.    The ferry trip was fine, though we did have a bit of an adventure on the bus ride.  Our bus (public coach) was randomly chosen in a special ops sniffer dog check. The sniffer dog was ok, but the engaged semi-automatic weapons in our faces was fairly intimidating, as were the very serious expressions and orders from the officers.  In summary, the 16 people on our tour group, Kate and I included were ordered off the bus and had to line up our bags in a line then line ourselves up opposite the bags, males and females separately.      The girls were then all frisked and all of our bags were searched again by the sniffer dog.     Three peoples´bags were picked out by the dog, but even though they had nothing to hide, they had a few very anxious moments I think it is fair to say.

Anyway, onto Honey Island.  It is an Island off the Southern part of Brazil, and is home to a lot of white sandy beaches, tropical waters, NO CARS and very relaxed people.   Xmas Dinner was put on by the Hotel where we stayed and included a traditional XMAs eve (10pm) dinner, featuring chester, Baked fish, Turkey, Salads and dessert.    We had to eat under candlelight though, as due to earlier storms, the power was out.  

Xmas day was a very relaxing one with a walk up to the lighthouse, more rain (which was a bit of a dampener) an island lunch.  Night time was apparently my birthday celebrations and Kate had arranged for me to be embarrassed, having a nice big chocolate cake made by the hotel staff and Happy Birthday sung by all of our tour group. It was a fun night and we played a drinking game called 7 up, probably the only drinking game I have played before and liked ( i know, I´m boring).

Anyway everyone, this update was a fairly boring one as it was XMAs afterall and we had a nice and relaxing few days (even if damp) on the Island.  I´ll aim for another update tomorrow, which will include Curitaba to Sao Paulo and onto Rio, which aside from the obvious highlights included a near-miss pickpocket attempt on me. 

Happy New Year to everyone who has already celbrated it and have fun everyone who like Kate and I are still to see in the New Year.

Adeus

Michael

PS, next email will be ´Adios¨as we are now back in Espanol territory.

chat soon