the centre of attention, and from that moment on whenever we saw the bar owner in his car he honked his horn at us and waved like mad!!

The next day went pretty much the same way, we did a bigger walk up a big hill with even better views, spent the afternoon writing yet more diaries - we hadn’t got many done in the USA because of all our family members occupying our time - such an inconvenience!! (Only Kidding!!). In the evening we decided to check out the steam room - and it was fabulous!! We hadn’t had a proper steam room since we were members of the gym in Northenden when we lived in Rippingham Road, so it was a true joy!! We even managed to plug my Iriver into the stereo, so had some chilled tunes to complete our relaxation therapy!!

Teres

opolis
30th October - 1st November

In the meantime we’d successfully booked ourselves into our chosen hostel, so in the morning we headed back into town and caught a shared taxi to Teresopolis. Apparently in this part of Brasil they are quite common and charge the same as the bus but take you right to the door. Another great idea!!

It turned out that after the hostel being full over the weekend we pretty much had the place to ourselves. The hostel was really nice, with the rooms surrounding a central courtyard, and a terrace at the top with incredible views over the Parque Nacional da Serra Dos Orgaos, a series of extremely pointy mountains as only Brasilian mountains can be!! We’d also heard that there was a vegetarian buffet restaurant in town (a rarity in these parts) so we