Traveling in Brazil

Over the last 10 days, I´ve disembarked from the boat on the Amazon, flown down to Rio and then proceeded to take buses for a week going further down. This has included sleeping in buses three nights in a row and four out of six nights, while making it down to -

- Curitiba - supposedly a successful experiment in city planning and organization. All I have to say is, if you do end up going there try not to visit on May 1 - it´s a national holiday and pretty much everything is closed.

- Foz de Iguazu - A stupendous series of waterfalls at the border of Brazil and Argentina, with Paraguay bordering nearby. Put together, they would probably equal the Niagara in volume but spread apart as they are, they are magnificent. There is no other word for them. If you do plan to visit both sides on one day, go to the Argentinean side first. They have attractions included in the trails that close relatively early in the afternoon.

- Florianopolis - A relatively large island about 20 hours south of Rio. Maybe it was getting to sleep in a bed after three nights in buses...maybe it was just the island itself (I´m willing to bet the latter). Florianopolis is gorgeous...the weather was perfect (26 deg Cel in this Brazilian winter!), the beaches were beautiful and the water was lovely. Watching people spend their entire day surfing and then waking up to go surfing again makes me wonder...I would like to find something I could do over and over and over all day and still go back to the next day...and the next. Still looking.

Word of wisdom gained the hard-way...cover shorter distances and spend more time at locations instead of trying to get to the moon and back in a week. It´s been a great week but I doubt I´ll be doing it this way again.