Oi!

Been meaning to use that as a title for a while but keep forgetting. Oi is Hello in Portuguese :)

Was going to write a bit more tonight rather than the did this did that thing but I think that's all you're going to get... There's just so much stuff that I've seen/done that it'd be cool to comment on but I've just been chatting with mum via yahoo messenger so have already been online for about a hour...

Where am I now? God know :) haven't really explored yet as soon as I got here about 2pm this afternoon I went to sleep. The cold seems to have calmed down a little now, thank god.

Saturday 5/06 - Last night Niki & I caught the bus form Foz at 8pm & we arrived at Curitiba at 5.45 this morning. Managed to get a bit of sleep. The bus seats are really cool & recline back quite a way then you have this leg & foot rest thing so you're almost lying down (bus form Rio was the same). Would have had a good sleep if we didn't stop every 5 seconds.

When we arrived at Curitiba we asked a local for directions to the train station. Its kinda freaky, Niki doesn't speak either Portuguese or Spanish & so far I've been lucky & have been with someone who's spoken more of the language than me. Now its kinda up to me to make us understood... The cool thing is I'm doing a ok job at it too :) We made it to the train station. We had to wait a hour in the freezing cold till it opened then another hour before it left. Its a senic line that goes over the rain forest & you get some pretty amazing views. Sad thing was I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have due to feeling a) sleep deprived & b) still kinda sick. They are rebuilding the line so after a 2 hour trip with a group of rowdy Portuguese school children :) we had to get off & change to a bus that we had to wait till 12.25pm for (1,5 hrs). So all in all we started out at 8pm last night made 3 changes of transportation & finished up at 2pm. Not a bad effort :) When we arrived we got ripped off by a taxi driver R$6 for a 2 min ride but honestly I probably would have paid R$10 just so I woudn´t have had to carry my pack!

Need to write more but they are closing up the shop... Will update the rest tomorrow. Think I've figured out the plan of attack & added another country to my list of places to go :)

Paranagua - Brazil, Saturday 5th June 2004, 9.30pm