I finished the last post on the bus to Porto Alegre, located halfway between the border and my planned first destination in Brazil. Thanks to the bus’ delay (it never did make up those 2 hours it was running late by Chuy. In fact it added on 30min more), we missed the 9am connection to Florianópolis so we bought tickets for the next one (12.45), I changed my many, many leftover pesos to reals, and we got coffee and breakfast and tried (unsuccessfully) to log on to the free wifi.

It was close to 11pm by the time I had checked into a hostel in Barra da Lagoa on Ilha de Santa Catarina that evening, having bid my translator for the past 24 hours goodbye halfway through the public bus ride across the island (he had cleverly made a reservation and I thought my odds of finding a free bed was greater in Barra da Lagoa although I realised that meant I would have to try to understand and communicate in Portuguese unassisted from then on). I caught up with the Swedish girls I met in Uruguay that first evening and it turned out they had had an even more delayed border crossing trip the day before so really I was lucky (although after such a long day, I sure didn’t feel that way).

I only had limited time in Floripa which is a shame because I would have loved to have had a few more days of surfing and exploring more of the beaches (without getting lost in the dense forestation on top of the hill between Barra da Lagoa and Praia da Galheta) but because I needed to get Iguazú Falls in before heading north, the time pressure was on. So after 3 short but lovely sun-filled days, I was back on a pretty epic bus ride west across the country. I proved I need to learn from my dad more because I managed to pick a seat on the distinctly WRONG side of the bus – so was being roasted alive by the sun for the first 4 hours of the trip until it finally descended behind some hills.

3 hours late (how on earth the bus managed that I don’t know) I got to Foz do Iguaçu, got the bus from the omnibus station to the local bus station and then walked the 15 blocks to the hostel. Check-in wasn’t till 1 and I was needing to see some waterfalls so I left my luggage in the storage room, changed into clothes that would hopefully make me survive the humidity and packed all the plastic bags I could find into my daypack. You’d think because I was clever enough to realise the waterfalls might get you wet but actually it was to protect everything as I walked to the bus stop because it had started pouring down rain. I even went in my flip flops which are 13 years old and not suitable for walking anywhere.

I spent 4 hours at the Brazilian side of the falls, which is really stretching it unless you do one of the treks. But it was so unbelievably rainy, so wet and so muddy, there wouldn’t have been any animals to see on the jungle trails so instead I just did the Cataratas trail. The views of the falls were beautiful but the postcard photo I had imagined I would get here was never going to happen so I tried a few different white balance settings and shutter speeds but mostly I just tried to keep the lense free of rain drops and the camera bag dry. Both nigh on impossible. In the process, I learned that my rain jacket has some kind of leak because even the parts of me that was covered in that were soaking wet by the time I got on the bus back to the entrance and back to Foz.

The next day, I headed to Argentina. And I was so excited that the weather had decided to change – glorious sunshine! Maybe I’d get that postcard photo after all. I should have known better than to think such thoughts because that just set the universe up to screw me over. Which is exactly what happened. Just 10min and far from enough photos in, on the upper trail, the camera and the lense stopped communicating. Literally. Just see this post which outlines exactly how I felt after having spent 15min trying to clean the lense connectors.

I travel with a compact digital camera as well as the DSLR but it’s even older and really only suited for snapshots (and no match for everyone else’s iphones and smartphones) and definitely not capable of doing any justice to capturing the cataratas at Iguazu appropriately. So my visual reminders of these waterfalls will now forever be tinged with the memory of how much damage minimal rain exposure can do to modern-day electronics and how hard it was for me not to just have a total breakdown in front of all the other tourists visiting the falls that day.

The day I was leaving Foz, I googled how to clean those damn lense connectors but then found the camera wouldn’t even switch on. Just completely dead. So I did the only thing I could think of which is to go into complete denial about the whole thing. As I headed to the bus station, I packed it back up and hoped it would just miraculously fix itself by the time I got to Paraty.

And that nearly didn’t happen because I got to São Paulo the first day of the school holidays, 3 hours delayed (I still don’t understand how! I think there is something seriously wrong with the timetables for Brazilian buses) and all the connecting buses to Paraty were fully booked. It took a lot of ‘are there any other options, any at all?’ questions before the guy at the ticket desk admitted that 3 hours before the 3pm bus, they would open up 3 seats and maybe (maybe!) I could get one if them. This was at 9am. So I waited for 3 hours, tried to connect to whatsapp and Google Hangout and anything that would help me pass the time before heading back to the ticket counter. And got the last ticket on the 3pm bus! So then I just had another 3 hours wait. But at least I made a bus.

Paraty was lovely, if a little humid, with much more to do than I had expected. So I didn’t have enough time there at all. I did a day trip with a lovely Norwegian girl from my hostel to the beach in Trinidade where we ended up getting soaked in the torrential rain as we waited in the queue for the bus back to Paraty (this country doesn’t do rain by halves – when it rains it pours) and since my DSLR had not miraculously fixed itself, I spent half a day trying to clean the lense and the battery compartment. After which I decided not to touch it anymore at all until after Christmas so as not to risk spending my first ever Christmas away from home in some seriously depressed state. While in Paraty, I also caught up with a few people I’d met in Foz which was really good fun and taught me a bunch of new rules to ring of fire – I have a pretty international understanding of the various rules of that game now. I didn’t think that would (or probably should) at all feature among the things I’d learn travelling in South America.

So to wrap up the first 2 weeks in lovely Brazil, here are the main lessons learned so far: don’t ever use your DSLR if it rains, buses are always delayed and they will still stop for half hour breaks on even the shortest trips, people will understand you if you speak Spanish but will reply in impossible-to-understand Portuguese so it’s better to stick to hand gestures, Havaianas are so cheap it doesn’t make any sense not to replace flip-flops you’ve had since you were 17, and don’t think it’s OK to drink cachaça the day before you plan to catch a 10am bus. Oh and of course; Brazilians might be the friendliest, most spirited and all round awesome people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting so far. This country is pure fun.

Today I’m listening to: Vance Joy – ‘Riptide’