Sunday, April 27th - We are now back in Salvador after a lovely week in Trancoso (muito obrigado/a Tess y Sandra) and have spent a nice day with Tomas & Julia. We have managed to upload our photos from Brazil so far, in a totally random order so sorry for that but at least they are here! Tomorrow we catch the bus up to Belem which takes 36 hours and then the Amazon adventure begins! We are excited and perhaps a little nervous ... three weeks on several different boats to Peru sleeping in our hammocks on deck should be interesting! If you haven't heard from us by the end of May, just assume that we have been eaten by killer-piranhas or we have gone up the wrong creek without a paddle (yes, that was a joke)! Hope you like the photos, the end ones of Salvador (which should be the first ones) are nice!

Tues?April, 2008 - Trancoso is soooo beautiful - just how we imagined Brazil would be, the colours and the vegetation are reminiscent of Bali and the beaches are beautiful... white sand stretching for miles as far as the eye can see! It is great to see Sandra and we have also met her housemate Tess who is lovely - we are staying in a pousada with our very own hammock outside our door which is great for reading books and having siestas! So far we have explored Trancoso and today we went turtle-spotting - Conrad managed to see loads of course!! :) Tomorrow we are going into Porto Seguro (the next town) to find out about cheap diving around here ... fingers crossed! Ciao,xx

Wow! Colour everywhere, people of all shapes, sizes, colours and anything else you can think of .... sunshine and beaches, palm trees, city squares full of people and market stalls, drums beating in the background, smiles and warm welcomes everywhere you go! That's just Salvador! We've been here for four days and so far we love it, we are heading South tonight on an 11 hour bus trip to Porto Seguro and then on to Trancoso to visit Sandra (my mum's step-daughter's daughter, got that?!!)

We are staying at a guesthouse in Pelourinho, Salvador which is a great place - there is even a resident black lab called Loco (means crazy in Spanish and I guess Portuguese too) and two haughty cats! Last night we celebrated passover as the hostel is run by an Israeli and there are several staying here - lots of wine, delicious food and singing!

We visited Itaparica which is an island off the coast of Salvador, about thirty minutes away by ferry - it was like a slice of paradise, blue water, sandy beaches, palm trees and very tranquilo (calm) ... bliss!

You may have noticed that we managed to upload some photos from the US but not all of them, we will try again but no promises! :) If and when we can, we will upload photos from here ... as expected the internet is not as common here as the US which is actually rather lovely!! (you can tell the hippy is writing this not the screen-addict!) We just wanted to write the blog so you know we made it to South America in one piece and are enjoying every second so far!

Lots of love to everybody, big hugs and smiles and sunshine,

Philippa & Conrad
xxxxx