Travel highlights from Joy...!

I'm still in Brazil at the moment, in a little town called Bonito which has incredible clear rivers; went snorkelling yesterday and looked to my right at one point to see a camen (little alligator thing) sat about 1.5m from me! We've just left the Pantanal (wetlands the size of France) which has been by far the best bit yet. We stayed in a jungle lodge the first night, with camen, monkeys, thousands of huge birds right outside and there was the most incredible thunderstorm I've ever seen- we walked along a boardwalk into the middle of the undergrowth and sat by the river watching it reflect off the water - seriously impressive but also a bit scary as there were jaguars rumoured to be prowling in that area.

The next two nights we spent on a farm in hammocks. There we went trekking/wading through the wetlands, pirana fishing (no sucess from me, though some other people caught some wicked ones) and the BEST thing so far - horse riding across the wetlands. I told the guy I could ride and asked for a fast one so he put me on a horse called 'Principo' who he told me was very fast. Near the end of the ride he stopped the group and told us we could gallop to the farm. I didn't even have to kick my horse and he took off, leaving everyone else behind and galloped like a crazy thing for about 15 minutes! He didn't even slow down when we dived into water up to his chest; he paused only for a second when he almost trod on a camen; it was the most exhillarating thing I've ever done!! I'm planning to horse ride wherever I can now because it was out of this world. I was really lucky too because some horses wouldn't even trot when they were kicked!

Rio Carnival was pretty insane. The sambadrome parade was spectacular. We danced for about 10 hours in the rain and the whole time the atmosphere was electric. I've never seen costumes like it, or even imagined floats like it- one was an actual dry ski slope! It was really wierd because afterwards they all just throw their costumes onto the street and walk off. The floats are dumped just outside the city too. All that effort then they all trundle off as if nothing has happened.

I took myself to a football match at the Marcana stadium in Rio. They are the loudest and most insane crowd I've ever seen. We sat in the 'party'zone, which we soon found out meant 'dangerous'zone, as in the second half a huge fight broke out about 5 people down from us. The whole crowd stampeded to get away right into us, so we ran but not fast enough to avoid the police who tear-gassed everyone. It was pretty scary; they were properly beating the fighters with their batons.

Rio generally felt pretty safe but I think maybe it was a false sense due to the numbers of people there for the carnival. We're camping most nights at the moment and will be until we hit BA. I absolutely LOVE it! Being in the tent is so much fun and they're pretty big too so we have plenty of space. I'm sharing with a girl called Charlotte who has just quit her management consultancy job and will be training to be a primary school teacher next year. Surprisingly I'm one of the youngest on the bus: the average age is about 26, loads of people have quit their jobs to come travelling and over half the bus are Aussies. We have our one token American, two Welsh girls and the rest from around the UK. Strangely almost all of them either went to uni in, worked in or are from Bristol! We're all still getting to know one another because there are so many of us but everyone seems pretty easy going and up for loads of fun!