Update from Rio de Janeiro

Olá!

We’ve finally made it to Rio de Janeiro, our final port of call before heading home. We’ve been tearing round like wild things to see as much as possible in our final couple of weeks - here is a quick update.

After Patagonia we flew up to Buenos Aires, to experience a heady mix of thick juicy steaks, cheap tango shows and excellent red wine - a really classy city and one we’d love to get back to one day. Contrary to the reputation that preceded them, we found porteños (Buenos Aires residents) to be friendly, helpful and very likeable. Indeed, a cheerful security guard was pleased to correct our pronounciation of British Airways for us - we’ll be flying home with “Bre-he Ar-we”, apparently!

Funnily enough, no-one in Argentina has mentioned the (Fawklands) war. We were surprised to see all Argentinian maps showing it as Argentinian territory, with Puerto Argentino as its capital instead of Port Stanley. We don’t hold strong political views on the war - except, of course, its a bad idea to mess with Maggie Thatcher - but we’re sure the locals would like to see Argentinian cartographers try to visit “Islas Malvinas” without their passports..

From Buenos Aires, we skirted round a few spots in the South of Uruguay before heading up to Brazil. Catchphrase for this week has been borrowed from a warning sign next to a slippery driveway - “Take a carefull”! Quite apt, seeing as our travel insurance ran out 10 days ago - the underwriters wouldn’t extend our policy beyond 18 months. So we’ve been taking as many carefulls as we can.

In other news: Phil sounds like John Inman when he tries to speak Portugese, too. And Emily was unable to resist the urge to go shopping in Buenos Aires' posh shops, looking resplendent in her finest backpacker gear - the scene from Pretty Woman springs to mind (“BIG mistake!").

So here we are in wonderful Rio. We’re exhausted, emotionally drained and very happy - its been an awesome trip and South America ranks right up there with South East Asia and Australasia in terms of the fun we’ve had. We fly back to London in 4 hours time, arriving tomorrow morning, and will head straight back to our flat in Battersea. Emily starts work on Thursday at her old place of work, an Education charity in East London, while Phil has already started his job hunt. Any offers???

And so, after 560 days, over 7,000 photos, 23 overnight bus & train journeys, 18 land border crossings (including 3 in one day!), countless beers “for cultural reasons”, temperatures ranging from +45ºc (Bangkok) to -15ºc (Bolivia), 10 ways to say “Hello”, 3 birthdays, 2 attempts to rob us (the last one being on Friday! Lets just say he picked the wrong tourists!), 1 World Cup and 1 Mullet - WE’RE COMING HOME!!!!

(2023 Update: photos from this trip were uploaded to Flickr a couple of years later, here are snaps from Uruguay and Brazil, and a link to the collection for the whole trip can be found here)