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Brazil
This is an edited version of our travel log. This first page is about before we went, and visiting Gemma's dad and Lizzie in Brazil.
June 1, 2005, Moseley
Time spent travelling -3days
Countries Visited - 0
Only a few hours to go before we leave our house for London. Still haven't finished packing, nothing in rucksack. Oops. 
Hoping to see quite a few people in London over the next few days and then we're leaving for real. We've got most of the essential purchases we need (including Gameboy Advance & Speedball 2). 70 hours until our flight... 
June 2, 2005, Hammersmith
It's finally happened. We've left Moseley for London and the first leg of our trip. We both a bit sad that we're not going to see our flat for over a year. 
We are also both starting to feel a little scared at the moment. 
Staying at Charlotte's house at the moment before the flight on Friday. We should be seeing quite a few people for a drink tonight which will be nice before we go. (Square Pig in Hoborne from about 6 if anyone else can make it. - It might be the Square Peg, Zoe has been known to get names of things wrong from time to time!!)
June 3, 2005, Heathrow terminal 4
Waiting at the gate to board flight to Rio. now both very scared, and very excited at the same time. flight leaves in 20 mins... 
June 7, 2005, Rio, Brazil
We're both here in an internet cafe in Paraty, about half-way between Rio and Sao Paulo.
Rio was really good and quite scary at the same time. (I felt like one of the little people that run around in Grand Theft Auto cities!) The hotel was nice, just on one of the beaches (Barra de Tijuca), with a view of the sea. The beaches in Rio go (Copacobana-Ipanema-Leblon-Barra) so that's where we were for the first three nights. Spent Sunday sat on Ipanema beach (hoping the weather was nice in the UK.) 
It was really mad, people walked up and down the beach selling virtually anything you could want (sandwiches, beer, beachballs, tattoos, shrimps, kites), we went to a vendor who gave us umbrellas and deck chairs at no cost on the condition we kept buying beer from him.
We were by far the whitest people on the beach!!
Although Gemma was happy as there were not a lot of pretty girls.
We went up to Christ the Redeemer and also a cable car to the top of sugar loaf mountain (one at night and one during the day). The Christ looks just like the pictures (and we took quite a few!!).
Last night we went on a old style tram in the hills above the city, me and Gemma's dad had lots of fun hanging off the side with loads of Brazilians trying not to fall off or get hit by trees/cars. Kind of like a downmarket Disneyland ride. More good views were had.
Now in a little mining town which feels a million miles from Rio. Will write more soon.
P.s. Brazilian drivers/roads are very scary. Although we saw one huge pothole in the middle of a dual carriageway that someone had helpfully planted a small tree in to stop people driving in it. 
June 9, 2005, Paraty
Hello again- we are still alive! We are slowly travelling back to Sao Paulo stopping places on the way. Today we are on a little island called Ilhabella, but nothing too exiting to say apart from having a nice hotel and pool. We will have to stop getting used to these types of rooms!
The last 2 days were in Paraty which is an old Portuguese port. Most of the houses were 200-300 years old and there were no cars. 
Very peaceful after Rio. We finally have managed to relax and stop being scared. We went on a cruise round some bays on a big ship. We stopped a couple of times to swim to some beaches- just like the pictures of tropical islands with palm trees and white sand. Tried to snorkel but we both nearly drowned. Sat on the boat some more with beers, and then stopped at an island which had ginger monkeys that came down from the trees. Apparently they are very rare.
We have lots of pictures to post, but haven't found anywhere to download them yet.
Si says-Still so white that Brazilian people laugh at me and children run away. Have spent most of today with 'total eclipse of the heart' by Bonnie Tyler in my head.
June 13, 2005, Ilhabella
Hello again. We arrived in Sao Paulo late last night.
IlhaBela was different than we expected, it is fairly big, around 350km sq. On the one side of the island is all the hotels, bars etc and on the other side there is no roads or towns, but loads of nice beaches. Lizzie sorted out a guy with a jeep to take us over the hills in the interior of the island to the far side and to take us on a trek through the forest to a waterfall.
We weren't quite prepared for the scale of the 'forest' it was more like semi rain-forest and the road to the far side was just a dirt track. We're gripped, we're sorted, lets off road I thought. Two hours later we were a bit saddle-sore from bumping around the jeep, but saw plenty of stunning views and rain-forest type stuff.
We also gave a lift to an old-man who was wandering through the jungle. It turned out he lived on his own on "cat beach", and ran a bar one beach further up the coast.
He told us (through Lizzie) all sorts of stories about the jungle, which made Ray Mears look like a tourist, and the old bloke sound a bit nuts.
(My favourite was about him getting bitten by a snake and cutting the offending bit of skin off his ankle with a pen knife and washing the wound with lemon juice.)
I got eaten alive by various species of mosquitoes and got grumpy, which puts it into perspective I guess.
Spent the weekend with Lizzie's mum in a place called Caraguatatuba. It was the town's festival de camerao (festival of shrimp), which means shrimp is cheap, so we barbecued lots and ate them.
Pictures are still proving a problem hopefully I'll be able to sort it soon.
No comments from Gemma today, she is wrestling with her back-pack.
June 15, 2005, Sao Paulo
Hello again. We're both still fine.
Unfortunately we have not been able to sort out any flights to Igazu Falls in the south of Brazil that will let us have a good look round before we have to leave. Instead we've decided to write that bit off completely and have moved our flights out of Brazil to Peru forward to the 17th. This will give us a chance to look round Lima and definitely see the Nasca lines before we do the Inca trail at the end of the month.
We spent Monday wandering round downtown Sao Paulo looking at the sights and trying not to get mugged, which was successful.
The size of Sao Paulo is something else. We got onto the roof of Bob and Lizzie's apartment building (they live on the top floor anyway) to look at the city at night. If the city "centre" is not pointed out to you, you cannot tell where it is. High rise buildings and lights stretch literally as far as you can see in all directions, before they become a orange glow on the horizon. There are loads of groups of high rise apartment buildings and offices which are big enough to be a normal city centre on their own. Its vast.
One of the other things that has stuck us both about Sao Paulo and Brazilian cities in general is the contrast between rich and poor. (forgive the cliché). Although I don't think it is as bad as in some of the other places we are going to visit later on. Most of the "fuvellas" here have limited electricity, phones and water (some legitimate, some stolen). Although they still don't look like great places to live from what we have seen in snatches from the car window. It would be good to see some of these places close up to dispell some of the myths about them, but its just too dangerous. (Especially for two people as obviously non-Brazilian as us!)
Yesterday was a nice relaxing day, we went to see where Bob and Lizzie are going to build their new house. It is about 1 hour drive from Sao Paulo (that's Brazilian driving time, multiply by 2 to get UK driving time!!). The place is really nice and very posh, the construction company have created all the roads and done landscaping to create what is essentially a really big park. People then buy up one or more plots and build their own house on it. (a lot of people build their own houses in Brazil, with hired labour, as construction companies have a tendency to collect your deposit on a new house and then scarper). The area has its own lake, riding stables, golf club and what I would describe as a "country club". We spent the afternoon there, used the gym for a bit (5 mins!!), went for a dip in the pool, dried off in the sauna. Then me a Gemma played tennis for a bit and then some pool in the bar, while Lizzie had a massage. All very nice.
Really starting to feel like we're getting into the traveller thing and getting in touch with the local culture and stuff, just like all the backpacker guides say. 
I am currently trying to see if the Sheretton in Lima is within our $30 a day budget for Peru.