Santa Cruz & Tarija, Bolivia

Throughout the past 7 months I have traveled in a myriad of ways. I slept on a ferry traveling between the Netherlands and England in order to catch our flight to Thailand. Two times I spent almost 12 hours on an airplane. Once I spent the night on a sleeper train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. I spent 2 days on a slow boat during the rainy season to get to Luang Prabang. I spent 5 days sleeping on deck of a dirty Indonesian boat. I took 5 overnight busses while in Australia. For a week while in New Zealand I slept in a small campervan. In South America long-distance busses are the norm. In between there were countless short flights, long bus rides, minivans, taxis, tuk-tuks and much walking. Most of these travels were at least somewhat enjoyable and many were a great place to take a break from all the sightseeing by reading a book or watching a movie. I like to think of myself as quite the experienced traveler by now. But the journey from Foz do Iguaçu to Santa Cruz seems to have severely ruined my romantic attachment to traveling this way.

It took us no less than 44 hours. Like I mentioned in my previous post, our bus from Foz do Iguaçu was scheduled to leave at midnight. After crossing the border into Paraguay we tried to sleep a little before we arrived in Asunción at 6 AM. We tried to catch a bus to Santa Cruz straight away, but were told that the next bus wasn't due to leave until 8 PM. We paid for a hotel close to the bus station and unsuccessfully tried to sleep a little bit, since the bus ride to Santa Cruz would take 24 hours. The hotel wasn't very nice, though, with very questionable sheets, so I didn`t get a lot of rest. By 8 PM we were ready to board the bus and we quickly realized that the busses heading to Bolivia are not the usual, air-conditioned, fully-reclining-seat havens that we have gotten used to in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. This bus was dirty and extremely uncomfortable. There was just no way to get any sleep, which is kind of crucial to your overall well-being when you've been awake for 36 hours and have 24 hours of traveling to go before you reach your next destination. We tried nonetheless, only to be rudely awakened for Paraguayan border formalities at 3 AM. We drove all night and all day. The driver drove very fast on pitch-black gravel roads and a few times I was sure the bus would simply fall onto its side. There was no air conditioning. The bathroom was basically a loose bucket on the floor of the back of the bus and guaranteed spilling, what will all that wild driving on gravel roads in the pitch-black darkness. Besides the necessary border formalities, we were not allowed to leave the bus to stretch our legs - not once.

I will always remember that journey as the day that I stopped loving long-distance bus travel. I did some yoga in between it all and tried not to kill anybody. But this is a part of traveling in South America and, in a way, I'm glad that we experienced it. But I'm also really glad that it's over and that I'll never have to do it again.



We arrived in Santa Cruz at night, took a taxi to our hotel and went to bed straight away.

Now, I don't know what image comes to your mind when you think about Bolivia, but mine did absolutely not match the places that we've seen thus far. When you read about Bolivia, things like ''poorest country in South America'' and ''an increase in violent crime against tourists'' jump out to you. One girl I met in Foz do Iguaçu told me that she'd stopped wearing earrings because they were forcefully snatched from girls' ears.

But Santa Cruz was nothing like that. I did some research and it turns out that the eastern part of Bolivia is actually quite wealthy and prosperous. Santa Cruz is the biggest city in Bolivia with 1.54 million inhabitants and is obviously doing quite well. The city is a mix of beautiful colonial architecture and shiny, new malls. Santa Cruz is close to the Amazon Basin and thus lies in the tropics - humidity guaranteed. I read that the people of Santa Cruz consider themselves to be more Brazilian than Bolivian and I can see why.



We only had one day in the city before moving on, which we spent walking around town. At night we spotted a real, live sloth in the palm trees of the central plaza - how amazing!



Perhaps foolishly, though, my favorite part about Santa Cruz was our hotel and the two kittens that lived there. In the short time that we stayed in town we got really close to them and one even brought us a live cockroach to our room one night. Thanks, I guess. It made me realize how much I miss our own cats who, by my mother's description, will probably be unrecognizable to us by now - apparently Bicho weighs a staggering 6.4 kilos!



On Thursday we flew to Tarija in southern Bolivia. I absolutely refused to spend 30 hours on another rickety bus to get there and so we paid a little extra and flew. The great thing about being in the poorest country in South America are the cheap prices - it's like being in South East Asia again! We`ve been spending more money on transport, we're sleeping in ridiculously swanky hotels and eat out 3 times a day without once spending more than our daily budget allows. It's nice. After an hour delay it took us less than 45 minutes to reach Tarija - a warm and sunny city surrounded by beautiful green mountains.



We actually don't have a map of this city. Lonely Planet didn`t print one - probably because no backpackers go out of their way to get here. So we decided to just walk around and see where we would end up - the way backpackers of yore used to do it, one imagines. The Lonely Planet does mention that while Santa Cruz is more Brazilian, Tarija is more Argentinian, and, again, I can see why. The streets have that all-familiar smell of barbecue about them.

This reminds me to tell you about a story of Paraguay. One time we bought some chipa and it turned out that it had minced meat inside. We carefully removed the meat and ate it anyway because we had a 6-hour bus ride ahead of us and hadn't had breakfast yet. Although there was no more meat, it still tasted like minced meat, and guess what? I really didn't like it! Nor did Jochem! The fattiness of the meat was just unbelievably disgusting to me. I like this new development - I knew that I would probably never want to eat meat again, but not once did it cross my mind that when I did eat it, I wouldn't like it. Vegetables all the way!

Back to Tarija, a small town with beautiful plazas and a lot of pastel-colored churches.



My favorite place in Tarija, though, is the Mercado Central. Here you will find your usual mangled animal corpses (reminiscent of Cambodia, if you catch my drift), but also the most beautiful produce section. Hidden in the middle of it all are tiny kitchens with tables and chairs set up next to it, where you pay 2 euros for the most amazing pile of food yet eaten in South America, while being serenaded by a group of local musicians. Some people worry about hygiene in these Bolivian street markets. We haven't been sick once, but, then again, we don't eat the meat that's been lying in the beating sun all day without refrigeration. I loved it - what a treat!







After lunch, by the way, you can head to the bakery section for one of the hundreds of sweet treats on offer!



What I also didn`t know about Bolivia is that it has a fairly successful wine region just outside of Tarija. Today we took a tour to visit 3 wineries, from the very small family-owned to the bigger corporation machines. One thing that they love here is singani - a spirit comparable to grapa. Not exactly my cup of tea, but Jochem liked it. Most wines tend to be on the sweet side, which we didn't like very much, although we did taste an amazing rosé and were allowed to bring the whole bottle back to our hotel! The wine ranks are grown at between 1500 and 2500 meters altitude and thus these are one of the highest wineries in the world.







The scenery in this region was also pretty amazing.



Tomorrow we are traveling to Tupiza by private car. Most busses leave at night and arrive at 4 AM, which is just crazy if you ask me, so we decided to take this route because it means that we leave at 7 AM and arrive at around 1 PM. One of the things that I remember most from The Other Flying Duchman's blog is that staying in Tupiza is nicer than staying in Uyuni. Once in Tupiza we will finally be able to see what everybody wants to see who comes to Bolivia - the biggest salt flat in the world at Salar de Uyuni.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

We just spent 4 days in the theme park that is Iguazú Falls. Brazil is nice, but it was not easy to get here.

It all started on Wednesday morning when we took a bus at 7.30 in the morning from Encarnación, in southern Paraguay, to Ciudad del Este, in eastern Paraguay. This part of the journey took 6 hours and was far from comfortable - the ride was bumpy, there was no air conditioning and the bus was packed with people. Had it not been for the lack of livestock it would have been your perfect South American bus nightmare. Next we had to take a local bus in Ciudad del Este from the bus terminal to the border. This was another long, bumpy and hot ride in a bus packed with people while hardly moving at all due to the enormous traffic jams in town. When we got off the bus, we discovered that we were, in fact, not quite at the border at all, and so we had no choice but to take an exceedingly overpriced taxi to take us there. Ciudad del Este may be the ugliest city in Paraguay. Maybe even in the whole of South America. Maybe even in the world! That's how much I hated it. There is nothing to do there except buy stuff tax free, so the streets are covered with people selling all sorts of crap and greedy Brazilians hoarding it. What commenced was a kind of annoying bus hopping game. From the taxi we walked to the Paraguayan border, got our exit stamps, hopped on another bus, got off at the Brazilian border, filled in the necessary documents, got our entry stamps, hopped on yet another bus, and got off at the local bus terminal in Foz do Iguaçu. We had no Brazilian money and there was nowhere to get it, so instead of paying for a bus we had to walk 12 blocks to our hostel in the now-familiar humidity. I was absolutely exhausted after that day and I don't care how cool it is - I am never doing that again and fully intend to pay the necessary tour operators to take care of these border procedures for me in the future.

Once in Brazil, though, we ended up having a nice evening. At the risk of sounding cliché, Brazil has a nice 'vibe'. We ordered some caipirinhas and went to bed early.

The next day we took a bus to visit the Brazilian side of the Iguazú Falls. I believe that this side is generally considered to be the lesser side, but I liked visiting it because you get a nice overall view of the waterfalls. The only downside was that the day had, quite suddenly and inexplicably, turned from hot and humid to windy, rainy and downright cold so we had to work a little harder to stay warm, but the views were amazing!







The next day we were so happy to see blue skies and sunshine, that we decided to stay at the hostel, enjoy the pool, and just relax.

On Saturday, then, we went on a tour with our hostel to the Argentinian side of the Iguazú Falls. The great thing about visiting Brazil's side first and Argentinia's side second, is that you move from the grand overview into detail. In Argentina we got incredibly close to the Devil's Throat, which is a massive wall of thunderous white water - very impressive.





The downside here, though, was that it was Easter weekend and this meant: crowds. Lots and lots of crowds. Although we came here during Easter on purpose because we figured that no one would ever close such a sight as the Iguazú Falls no matter what God thinks, it seemed like every parent, grandparent and baby had decided to come as well. Like this, Iguazú Falls starts to feel like a visit to Ikea on Easter Monday, which is less than ideal. Also, I got a little sunburned. But it was still amazing. Argentina has done a very good job exploiting every possible angle of these breathtaking waterfalls, so there's a lot to do in the area - enough to keep you occupied for days. We took a train through the jungle to reach the Devil's Throat, walked around a lot and took a little thrilling boat ride. I have discovered that I have a ridiculously good time in fast boats, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a boat that goes straight into this waterfall:



It was very exhilarating because you don't know how far the boat will go into the waterfall and you can't see and you feel the force of the water on you. There's no way not to get completely drenched, but this is actually quite nice on such a hot day.





Today, on our last day here, we made a visit to the Itaupú Dam, which is blissfully on both the Paraguayan and the Brazilian side, so that I did not have to go back to Ciudad del Este to see it. The Itaupú Dam is the second biggest dam in the world and is quite impressive in its sheer size. But, I must admit, I felt that I had seen enough of the circus in this area to really appreciate it. I kept thinking about the environmental consequences of the dam and how much wildlife has been destroyed to make it possible. I did enjoy the views over the Rio Paraná, and the blossoms, and the capybara, the biggest rodent in the world, just grazing away on the shores of Lago de Itaupú.







Often you could also find me in one of these two positions:





And now our time in Brazil is already coming to a close. Brazil is such a big country and there is so much to see, but if I fall in love with yet another South American nation I will never get myself back to Europe by early June. It's time to move on. We're taking a 6-hour bus back to Asunción tonight, which leaves at the inconvenient hour of 12 'o clock at night, probably to avoid the crazy masses that we encountered at the border just 4 days ago. We decided not to spend any extra time in Paraguay, even though we love it there, but to travel straight to Bolivia. Our time is running out and there's still so much left to see and do. Gotta keep moving!

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Encarnación, Paraguay

On Saturday we left Asunción and took a bus to Encarnación in southern Paraguay, but not before we had another pitcher of tereré at the bus station.



We arrived in Encarnación 6 hours later and it is pretty hot here. We met a Dutch woman today who has been travelling through Paraguay for years and she told us that this is not normal for this time of year - it should be about 20 degrees Celcius colder. At least it´s a dry heat, it cools down at night and our room at Hotel Germano has air conditioning and a ceiling fan.



In Encarnación we quickly discovered that travelling in Paraguay is not always easy, because there are almost no services for tourists, despite the fact that there are a lot of things to do in this region. In fact, the tourism industry hardly seems to be there at all. I´m not sure whether there are no services because there are no tourists or no tourists because there are no services, but either way it means a little bit more effort for this lazy person, for I´ve become quite used to the ease of travelling through South East Asia and the information overload in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina. For example, on Sunday afternoon we wanted to visit Hotel Tirol, a famous landmark in the area. We were informed that a local bus would be able to take us there. We waited at the bus stop for over an hour while eating our chipa, but no bus ever appeared, so in the end we had to take a taxi for the day not to be a total waste. Once there, though, we had a pretty nice time. Hotel Tirol is set in a beautiful forrest and has a certain old times´charm, although it was a bit eery to be there with just the two of us. Outside of the capital you will see this often though - just you out there without a single soul to accompany you. We had some beers and a quick dip in the pool, which was very nice on such a hot day.





On Monday we took another taxi to what is arguably the main draw of Encarnación: the Jesuit settlements in Trinidad and Jesús. These were in fact the whole reason that I wanted to come to Paraguay in the first place, but like it always seems to happen, we love it here so much that we wish to stay longer. We visited Jesús first and even though this has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993, there was absolutely no one there. We had the ruins, which were restored beautifully, all to ourselves with just a flock of pigeons and some very loud parrots for company. Jesús is a great place to get an overall overview of what a Jesuit settlement would have looked like in the 18th century, although this particular site was abandoned in 1767 when the Jesuits were expelled from the region.









Trinidad, on the other hand, is slightly bigger and has great details in its structures. Here there were a couple of workmen on lawnmowers, one small group led around by a guide and one lone female traveller. Unbelieveable!









Today was our last day in Encarnación and we wanted to visit Parque Manantial. Getting there, however, sounded very complicated when we asked our friendly landlady for help, since the Lonely Planet doesn´t even tell you how to get there. We were told to just go to the bus station and start asking random bus drivers if they were going in that direction. If they are and there is enough space on the bus, they will take you there for a small fee. It seems like a combination between taking an ordinary bus, a collective taxi, and hitchhiking. Now, I don´t know about you, but to me that sounds very vague. It turns out, though, that once you get the hang of it, it´s surprisingly simple - we had a ride out of town in a matter of minutes. The park has a campsite with swimming pools, a restaurant and numerous walking trails, but we came to go horseback riding. No need to announce your coming or to make a reservation - the nice lady at the restaurant just called up the horse guy and 30 minutes and another pitcher of tereré later we were greeted by a man with his little daughter on horseback with 2 horses waiting for us. We went on a very nice ride through some beautiful forrest and even rode in the river for a little bit. When we wanted to get back to town we simply went back to the main road, held up our thumb and took the next bus back.







We are getting ready for an early start tomorrow because our bus to Ciudad del Este in eastern Paraguay leaves at 7.30 AM. Luckily our hotel is right across from the bus terminal. 5 hours later we should arrive in Ciudad del Este where we need to catch a local bus to immigration, because our next stop is Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil! Our passports are starting to look like ¨tattooed circus ladies¨ alright, as Elizabeth Gilbert beautifully describes in Eat, Pray, Love.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Asunción, Paraguay

We arrived in Asunción on Thursday morning. I read in our Lonely Planet that Paraguay is actually the poorest country in South America after Bolivia. Although this is hard to tell when you walk past the opulent colonial buildings of downtown Asunción, it is easy to see while driving through the countryside - there are chickens roaming free everywhere. Perhaps this sounds like an odd comment, but during these travels I have come to find that in poorer countries farm animals appear to live much better lives than in affluent countries, which is something that I find more than a little ironic. Just as when we traveled through Uruguay, I am surprised to find how much I like it here. Paraguay is very green and covered with palm trees, which kind of reminds me of Bali. The earth is a dusty red, which kind of reminds me of the Outback. It is beautiful, yet so few tourists ever come here. I guess that´s why I like it as well.

We only stayed in Asunción for two days and besides walking around we also visited a museum commemorating the Stroessner dictatorship and saw the movie The Descendants at the mall. But we spent most of our time enjoying Paraguay´s amazing cuisine.

We first came upon it in the small town of Coronel Bogado, also known as the Capital de Chipa. Chipa is a type of bread made with manioc flower, eggs and cheese. Our bus from Montevideo made a quick stop in Coronel Bogado on the way to Asunción. A local lady come on board with a straw basket, covered with a white blanket - inside, she had hidden fresh, warm chipa. We were dying to buy some but didn´t have any Paraguayan money yet, but an older Paraguayan gentleman bought two pieces for us. I can´t even begin to tell you about this chipa. It has an actual crispy crust (our friends can attest that South Americans appear to prefer their bread soft) and on the inside is a lovely yellow filling - something between the inside of a French baguette and cookie dough. The bread is sprinkled with just a few fennel seeds to give it that extra flavor. It´s the best bread I´ve had in 7 months.



In Asunción, then, we would usually hang around the Plaza de los Héroes to sample local street food, which was really good and very cheap. We would usually start off with a slice of potato tortilla and a slice of sopa paraguaya, which is cornbread with cheese and onion. Then we would get churros for dessert. You might know churros, which is basically fried sweet dough, but in Paraguay they like to stuff their churros with dulce de leche.





To round off the meal, we would get a pitcher of tereré, which is iced maté. Maté is very common in Argentina, more so in Uruguay, but in Paraguay it is an obsession. I can best describe maté as grassy green tea. When you order maté, you will receive one cup, to share, stuffed to the brim with what looks like dried grass cut up into little pieces. You will also receive a metal straw to suck the maté, since they don´t bother to deal with tea bags in these parts. In Argentina and Uruguay you will see loads of people carrying such a cup and straw in one hand and a thermos with hot water in the other - sipping maté all day. But in Paraguay it is almost always warm and sunny (yet another reason to love it here), so here the people drink iced maté. Instead of a thermos with hot water, then, you will get a pitcher with water, ice and crushed yuyos (medicinal herbs), which gives your maté extra flavor. Some say it is an acquired taste, but I loved it immediately.





For snacks we would buy fruit, like these grapes - the biggest grapes I have ever seen.



To summ up: Paraguay is great! The weather is nice, the people are friendly, the food is amazing, there are hardly any tourists and it is cheap. I might stay longer than I had planned.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Montevideo, Uruguay

I like Uruguay, but I find it increasingly difficult to explain why, yet I feel so at home here. Uruguay has but a mere handful of major tourist attractions, namely the capital Montevideo, the beaches on the Atlantic coast and the UNESCO World Heritage town of Colonia del Sacramento - the rest is cowboy country. It has, however, no deserts, no glaciers, no significant national parks or notable wildlife. I like it though. It is a small and easily managed place. Life moves at a slow pace. The people are friendly, helpful and genuinely interested in us. The food is great and every street smells like a perfectly executed barbecue (I might be a vegetarian without an interest in ever eating meat again, but that smell is pretty amazing). Montevideo is the nation´s capital and houses 1.3 million people, although it is hard to tell on the street - it is always quiet and there never seems to be a moment when all the shops are open, for there are always a few that are closed. It makes me wonder where everybody is, but you don´t hear me complain. For tourists there are a lot of museums to visit, considering how small the Ciudad Vieja (´Old City´) is. We´re not the museum-visiting kind, though, so we brought a city map and took ourselves on a little walking tour.

We saw some pretty old buildings...


Calle Juan Carlos Gómez

Some pretty leafy plazas...


Plaza Constitución

And some pretty fancy statues...


Rambla Bretaña

By the way: notice the wind in those palm trees. It´s like a fall storm has fallen upon Uruguay and it´s actually quite cold here at the moment.

There was really only one thing that we wanted to do in Montevideo and that is to eat noquis. Noquis is how the people in Uruguay spell gnocchi, which is, of course, the famous Italian dish of potato dumplings. It´s a tradition in Uruguay to eat noquis on the 29th of every month. Traditionally, at the end of the month, noquis was all the people could afford to eat. These days, people everywhere in Uruguay eat noquis on the 29th - for old times´ sake, I assume. You´ve got to love a people who turn an economic necessity into a monthly food fest. Sadly, though, we leave Uruguay tomorrow (on the 28th!) and won´t be able to participate in this wonderful tradition.



To compensate, Jochem has made me noquis every single day that we have been in Uruguay. Yesterday he prepared a particularly impressive number when he mixed butter with cream and chili - YUM!



It saddens me to say, then, that Montevideo is the only place thus far during this world trip that I have actually been afraid. This afternoon, during our walking tour (while following the walking tour´s instructions - I´m not one of those fools who aimlessly wanders off the beaten track!), I noticed that a couple of boys (hardly teenagers, really) had started following us into a quiet side street. This made me suspicious because of a story that Klaus (our new friend from Germany whom we met on the Navimag ferry and who is also travelling through South America) had told us, namely that he was also walking through the Ciudad Vieja, alone, and was suddenly attacked by a bunch of youngsters who stole his very expensive camera. I quickly gave my engagement ring and passport to Jochem for him to hide in his money belt, but I noticed that they were getting closer. I think there were about 3 or 4. I was starting to panic a little bit because I knew that we needed to get back to the main street but in order to get there we needed to walk through yet another little side street with those boys right behind us. Two older gentlemen had already warned us to keep walking and, basically, not look so lost with our map in the open (I told you that the people in Uruguay are friendly). I put the map in my purse and started walking pretty fast towards the road, where Jochem thought we would be safer, because it was busier than in those small streets. It took a kind of crazy crossing during rush hour on a 6-lane road before they gave up and we quickly walked back to our hostel just as the rain really started to come down. It makes me sad to leave my beloved Uruguay on such a sour note, but on the other hand it is a reminder that we´ll be travelling to poorer countries now and should probably be a little bit more careful.

Anyhow, most of our time in Montevideo was spent inside at our hostel Posada al Sur.



One of the reasons why we spent so much time inside is that it´s surprisingly cold and rainy here now. Another reason is that this hostel is one of the nicest places we´ve ever stayed at and that it´s therefore no punishment to stay inside. The main reason, however, is that we simply preferred it that way and I want to elaborate on that, because after nearly 7 months I think that I have finally come to accept my travelling ways, meaning that, sometimes, I prefer to do absolutely nothing. This might seem obvious to you, but you would not believe the amount of anxiety, guilt and stress I had to overcome concerning this particular issue, for who gives up everything to travel across the world to do... nothing? Yet, this is how I spent most of my time in Montevideo:



I have finally reached a stage where I at least TRY not to worry that this is somehow, to put it mildly, a huge waste of my time and money (ergo: crazy!), for I have come to realize that travelling is not the same thing as going on vacation (again, this might seem obvious to you). Sightseeing for 3 weeks is one thing, but when you´re away from home for almost a year, it´s very different. You try sightseeing every single day for 9 months and see how much you like it. Sometimes you just need to wear some baggy pants, put on some Top Chef and eat from a bowl on the couch. Of course, this ´hominess´ is exactly what you, the wild and free backpacker, do not have and should not want to have, since you gave up your home to be this wild and free backpacker, but that is exactly why sometimes you crave it with such intensity that you kind of start to play house in a hostel. At least, I do.

I´m also trying to overcome my preconceived ideas about what I, the traveller, should be doing (it´s a true testament to how much I value Lonely Planet publications that I think every thing they print is something I should be doing - should being the operative word). Do you want to hear the truth of it? I am simply not interested in art, or theater, or film, or music, or tango, or in going to bars, or in going to clubs. If I may, I would kind of like to spend the last few months of this world trip guilt-free doing nothing more than walking around, eating good food, reading the occasional book, looking at wedding websites, and going on wildlife excursions. And FIY: no, I do NOT like black coffee and I never have and probably never will. I like my coffee with a jug of warm full fat milk and some sugar. And just so you know: I´m going to stop drinking red wine too. I like white wine (preferably sauvignon blanc), rosé and sparkly wine.

In case you were in doubt, well yes, that was my internal monologue.

On to the next thing then, which would be a 20+ hour bus ride to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. We had initially planned to travel up the coast of southern Brazil, but we had forgotton about this little thing called Semana Santa, which basically means that since it´s Easter, everything is full (don´t you know?). Plus, whereas in Argentina there appears to be a bus leaving about every 5 minutes, in Uruguay busses leave only once a week. I guess that would be the downside of this otherwise beautifully tranquil society (adolescent muggers aside). We didn´t think it would be smart to stay in Uruguay for another 2 weeks just so that we could see the beaches of Brazil, so now we´re taking an earlier bus straight to Paraguay and we hope to explore Brazil from there. Sadly, it also means that I will be leaving Uruguay after less than a week. It´s really hard sometimes, you know, travelling? Nah, just kidding - it is AWESOME!

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!