Asuncion

Hey remember back in December when I uploaded a map to show where I might be going?

Red= where I been Green=where I am going
And er, here is what happened so far!

So after Jeri, I left Brazil, and went where few backpackers venture, to Paraguay, to meet my friends from Christmas at their pad in Asuncion. Just had a great week chilling by the pool in their luxury villa. Thanks guys! And today I flew to Iquique, in north Chile, basically to pick up the gringo trail where I left off in Novemeber, when I went to Bolivia. All of this you can quite clearly tell from the map above!!! (dotted lines are aeroplanes, since I have given up on long distance buses for a while)

Q. Oh yeah and why did I change the route?

A. Some great big rainforest in the way called the Amazon or something. Which is navigable by boat, but I am weary of Mosquitos and Cayman and prefer to go to the beach instead.

Finally, for todays post, its so cold here in Chile, like 25degrees or something, I might have to put a jumper on for the first time in 2months....

Jericoacoara

I spent my last week in Brazil, at the Seaside Oasis town of Jericoacoara. Known as Jeri, because no-one can pronounce it properly. It was a slightly surreal place. The strangeness enhanced by the two cows who lived downtown. One cow was religious and could often be seen hanging out by the church. The other was more into the restaurant scene, and would hang out downtown, nibbling on the floral arrangements outside the pizza restaurant. Well anyway maybe you had to be there, but roaming cows at 1am, hanging out in town plazas always give me a fright.view from on top of the sanddune.some coast!

Buggy Tour! This was cool speeding along sanddunes in crazy beach buggys. Note from the photo that it is regulation to drive ones buggy sans flipflops. (actually they wouldnt let us drive, incase we broke there buggys)
Los Chilleanos, riding their Boohey... Its pronounced buggy, ok :)
Ubiquitous "view through natural archway" photo.

Ubiquitous "bikes on top of sunshelter in a sanddune in the middle of nowhere" photo!

Chapada Diamantina

Just West of Salvador is the national park Chapada Diamantina, where I hooked up with "Extreme EcoAdventure" for a 3day trek. The first day we made a short trek to a waterfall and made camp alongside it. The next morning I was up bright and early with sunrise, thinking we would be setting off before it got to warm, but still at 10am we were lulling around having breakfast.

We had packed up our sleeping bags and tents and were ready to head off and then we found out that day 2 would be, walking up a river in flipflops to Mixila Waterfall. At this point we renamed our tour company "Extreme Chillout" and had a nice day out at the spectacular falls at the end of the canyon.

We came back to the camp at the end of the day, no need to move the tent, for some more chillout time by the waterfall with the guitar.

On the final day we made a 13km trek back to Lençois, in the Extreme heat and managed to run out of water too. Oops. After these 3 arduous days in the wilderness, there was only one sensible option to take. Yep. Back to the beach...

Beach!

In what may or may not turn out to be a regular series, here is some pictures of a beach, to cheer you up. To be more specific Praiha Jeribucaçu, near Iticaré. Had a great time in Iticaré with the crew at Billabong hostel. Got a few more surfing lessons in there. I think I am now worse at surfing than I was before, as all the conflicting advice spins around my head as I make the move to stand on the board, leading me to fall off all too shortly afterwards. Probably best not to think too much when surfing, "Just feel the wave dude."