Well, out of a total of 9 weeks travelling I feel entitled to the three bad days I experienced after I last wrote to you all. And to top it all off, I already wrote this email and then lost the lot of it. Anyway, Iīll write it all out again, and relive those foul three days. Of course had I spent a little extra time planning, the entire time could have been avoided, but this is what happened given that I didnīt. I took a bus, for 8 hours, from Mendoza in Argentina to Santiago in Chile. Apart from wanting to buy a couple of Chilean souveniers, which really wasnīt overly important, the soul purpose of going back to Santiago was to take a quick direct flight to Brazil, because it has a major international airport there. Had I looked up the prices of the flights on the internet prior to leaving Argentina, I wouldnīt have bothered going. $560 USD was just a tad out of my price range. So, in the end I had to take a bus anyway, and sure as eggs, the bus drives straight back through Mendoza. But, it gets worse. My single day in Santiago was horrible. The bus arrived at 6am and nothing opens until at least 9. Luckily there was a 24hr luggage storage place, so I didnīt have to carry all my stuff around. I took a bus into the city and wandered around looking for somewhere I good get information about flights, and by about 10:30 I realised Iīd have to resort to taking the bus. Taking the advice from my Lonely Planet guide book, I went searching for the tourist information office, where the staff speak English and offer excellent advice. I walked for over an hour to find the place (not lost, the street was just really, really long), I had a canine companion most of the way too. And then when I finally found the place, they were of absolutely no use what-so-ever. I thought Iīd better head back to the bus terminus to book my trip to Brazil. The problem I encountered here is that there are 4 main bus terminals, and Iīd only left my luggage in one of them. And being navigationally retarded, I didnīt think to note the name of the terminal or the address, or even general location. So I had to find it by visiting all four and recognising the right one. It was the 3rd one I visited, and even finding that was a polava. I almost wandered right out of town looking for the damn place. Thankfully there was an interstate bus letting some people off on the side of this massive highway I was walking along. When I enquired where the bus terminal was, the bus driver was kind enough to take me there, seeing that was his destination too. For this I am very grateful, because it was a good 15 minute drive, and not even in the direction I was walking. As if that wasnīt enough, buying the ticket was another source of amusment. There are three bus companies that ride from Santiago to Porto Alegre, two of them go direct which is a 35 hour ride, and the third one goes via Uraguay and so obviously is rather unattractive purely because of the additional time. The first direct company I enquired at didnīt have any seats available until the 2nd of February, which at the time was nine days away. Not at all appropriate. The second direct company thankfully had a single seat left on one of itīs two buses that departed at 10am the next morning, and I snapped it up straight away. I found some cheap accommodation next to the bus terminal and went there to make myself a sandwich for lunch. Here I met 5 bus drivers and mechanics, and we chatted away, using the two way dictionary, phrase book, and cherades as catalysts for our conversation.  After an hour, all but one of them had to leave, and the last one accompanied me into town to go and find some souveneirs. The whole trip was grossly unsuccessful (I was looking specifically for a pin). And it was really tiring, because when I thought itīs hard having to look up every second word whilst sitting at a table over lunch, itīs much more difficult trying to do it walking around and watching where youīre going. Anyway, finally the guy left, and I decided to take a bus to this hill where thereīs this massive cable car... they might have pins in a touristy place like that. By this time it was nearly 8pm, and I got there 20 minutes before it closed, but the guard told me it takes 30 minutes to get to the loading point of the cable-car. I was sufficiently despondent and irritable now to just go back to my accommodation and sleep. But then I got on the wrong bus and had to ask in a shop how to get back to where I needed to be. After one of the teenage shop assistants put me in a cab and told the driver where to go, he proceded to jump into the cab with me. I guess itīs no big deal, but I wasnīt entirely sure why he came for the ride, and I was a bit suspicious. But they dropped me off a block from the Casa De Familiar where I was staying, and then I managed to get totally lost, walking the rest of the way. A Casa De Familiar is just a private home where they rent out beds for the night. Finally back, I could go to sleep and just forget about the whole stupid day. But there was a surprise waiting for me. Someone else in my room. A girl from Peru who appeared to want to stay up all night and talk. Grumble! End of bad day 1. The bus trip. The prospect of 35 hours in a bus is not an overly exciting one. Although I must admit I was looking forward to the possibility of not having to talk to anyone for quite a while. My seat was at the back, right next to the smelly toilet, and I was sitting next to a smelly man. I know I smelt pretty bad towards the end of the jouney, but he started off smelly. In front of us sat a couple of young Chilean guys going to Brazil to surf for a month. No one occuppied the two seats opposite me, that was reserved for the spare driver when he needed to sleep. And in front of those two seats sat another Chilean surfer and an Israeli guy that spoke English. The bus was comfortable enough, and showed videos in English, and the food was fantastic. Thankfully the smelly Brazilian guacho (cowboy) who I was sitting next to was happy enough to just stare out the window and not talk. But I spoke to the surfers and Israeli a fair bit, and was even included in a game of Spanish Trivial Pursuit with some of the other younger passangers. For those of you who now how useful I am in a game of Trivial Pursuit in English, if you can manage to conjure up an image of someone even worse than that, well thatīs what I was like in this Spanish game. The bus was held up at the Chilean/Argentine border for six hours because apparantly it wasnīt carrying the correct paper work. Iīd previously emailed Steve to say that the bus would be arriving at about 9pm, so now I had to call Mum and Dad in Australia to call Nick, to email Steve that the bus was delayed. Anyway, the bus made several stops at cafeterias and the like, and because of the delay, the bus company paid for a meal of salad and the biggest slab of milenesa (schnitzl) that youīd ever set your eyes on, for each passanger. As the bus ride progressed, so did my misserableness. I felt really irritable and grumpy, dirty and smelly. At the stops, most of the girls on the bus went and washed there hair in the bathroom sink, re-applied their makeup, and changed there shirts. If theyīve got all that stuff in their day pack, what on earth do they carry in their main pack? At 4:30 in the morning the bus pulled into Porto Alegre, and I was debating whether I should call Steve at this rediculous hour or just hang about for a few hours and wait ītil a more sensible time. I decided to call. Whilst I was waiting for him to pick me up, old cleaner approached me and started talking. There was a girl sitting next to me who told him that I donīt speak Portugese, only English. She seemed friendly enough, but looked dodgy. So, anyway, this old man starts trying to talk in English about Charles Dickens, and then Steve and his girlfriend Fernanda, Fe, turned up. End of bad days 2 and 3. Steve and Fe had been at the bus terminal at 9pm, and when they found out the bus was delayed they went out to a BBQ, and had just walked in the door when I rang. So timing wise, it all worked out okay. And Steve didnīt get the email from Australia until the following Monday. The day after I arrived was Sunday, and we stayed at home and watched the soccer, and I read some of my book in the hammock. I've been fairly lazy whilst in Porto Alegre, and I'm loving it. Spent a couple of hours on my first day in the city sitting with this Bob Marley type guy who had a little mat with earings and other things he'd made out of wire in one of the markety type streets. He cut a bit of my hair and made some earings out of it. That was okay, I was planning to get my hair cut anyway. Done a bit of shopping whilst I've been here, I guess I felt like I had to replace the weight of some of the stuff I sent home with Nicko.  Went out a couple of times with friends of Steve and Fe, and the three of us spent the weekend with Fe's parents and Grandma at the family beach house, about an hour and a half drive away from Porto Alegre. Porto Alegre is a port on a river, not the coast of Brazil. The beach was amazing. Apparently it's a 250 km stretch of unprotected coast. No bays or harbours or anything. Really odd looking. It rained most of the weekend, but the one time we did walk down to the beach, just for a peak, this wave rolled in and came up all the way to the road. Anyone who had a towel or anything on the sand would have just got soaked. There's not a whole lot of newsy stuff to report from here, but there are lots of observations I'd like to mention.  And I'm not sure how to tie them all together, so it may appear a bit list like. For example, at night in Porto Alegre, the few red light cameras that there are, are turned off and everyone drives straight thru red lights because of the fear and high possibility of being car-jacked or mugged. In addition, in the street where Steve and Fe live, there's a guard on duty at night, and if and when he sees someone in the street he blows a whistle, just so they know that they are being watched. Sort of like a deterrent to try anything sneaky or illegal. And then there are the showers that are kind of funny. I remember when I was in the USA many years ago, some of the showers had about 5 taps and 3 spouts and all sorts of weird stuff (Uncle Jack and Auntie Evy, I'm specifically remembering the shower at your old place). Here, the showers only have one tap. So you can't control the temperature of the water, you can only turn it on and off. The water is heated by an electric gadget installed over the shower head. Steve and Fe's wasn't working for a few days, when you showered it stunk of burning plastic, so we had to do the cold shower thing for a while. This was fine for the most part because it's been between 32 and 36 degrees. Very hot and sticky, especially at night when you need to close the windows to keep the mossies out. Another funny thing, is the phone book. I went to look something up in the white pages, but it's not listed by the person or business' name like a normal phone book anywhere else in the world. It's listed by street, and then the house/appartment number of the street and the name of the person that lives there and their phone number. Bit of a bugger if you don't know where someone lives. Also pretty good for criminals that operate in a certain region. Just go down the list of numbers in order and then go and burgle the first place that doesn't answer the phone. Oh, and today Steve showed me something else rather amusing. You can go to a store and buy a single cigarette... how bizarre is that? Two of Steve's neighbours are worth a mention as well. First there's the lady that talks at the top of her voice and sounds like some character from the muppets, or a fraggle or something. And then there's the man that, without fail,  at about 9:30 every morning coughs his guts up for about an hour. Really having a good go at it, as if he's choking to death. Besides being really revolting, it's actually quite funny. And then there's Steve's nameless fish. In a fairly large tank, together with a few platic plants and some rocks and pebbles, is this tiny, tiny, little red and blue fish. The other five he had died within the week he bought them, apparantly something to do with the acidity of the water, but this little champion just keeps on going. What a fighter. Finally, I'll mention how the bus system works over here, it's very good. All trips cost the same amount regardless of the distance being travelled. Virtually everyone gets on through the back door and gets off through the front door.  The exception are people with pensioner cards, who can get on in the front door. To get from the front to the back you need to go through a turnstyle. At the turnstyle sits an operator who collects tokens or money from the passanger as they go thru. Each type the turnstyle is turned, the next highest sequential number ticks over on a counter. If at the end of the day the counter number doesn't match the number of tokens and the amount of money, then the turnstyle operator is charged the difference. I had a couple of funny experiences in the beginning, where I saw some people going thru the turnstyle and paying and others just sitting at the back behind the turnstyle and not paying. There were no seats at the front of the bus, so I had to sit behind the turnstyle, but I thought that it's not fair that I don't pay for my ride, so I put my token on the operators little table and sat down. Then, when I had to get off the bus, I realised that I wasn't allowed out the back door, and had to go through the turnstyle, so I had to use another token, which means I essentially had to pay again to get through. Luckily Fe's work provides her with unlimited tokens free of charge, Fe drives to work so doesn't even need them, so Steve, Bookie (Steve's brother who remembered me at Buenos Aires airport), and I use the tokens. Another time I put the token on the table and pushed the turnstyle, but I wasn't in it. The operator wouldn't let me just climb over, he made me pay another token and push the turnstyle again. Oh and one last thing is the built in BBQ at Fe's parent's beach house. It's a BBQ in a cupboard type thing that turns into a chimney. And you don't put the meat on a grill like at home. Each piece of meat, vege or cheese (yep they BBQ balls of cheese.... yummmm!) is threaded onto big metal skewers like massive kebabs, and the skewers rest on the edges of the BBQ and the coals are in the bottom of the cupboard. Excellent! Also, I don't think I've metioned the ice cream in South America. They have ice cream shops everywhere and so many flavours! Lemon Mousse (very different from normal lemon, you can actually taste the egg-white/merrangue flavour), grape, kiwi, papaya, licorice. Everything. Most of the flavours I just mentioned are fairly gross, but there are hundreds of fantastic flavours too. And it's all done by weight. Even if you put it in a cone, not a cup, they have a special ice cream cone weighing device. See the places are called ice cream buffets. You go and serve yourself, and make it as many flavours as you want... big scoops, small scoops, sauce on top, sprinkles on top, wafer biscuits or lollies on top. Fantastic! Also, Brazil has a huge social problem where there is at least 50% of the population living below the poverty level, and there is a massive gap between the rich and the poor. So there are a lot of funny little jobs around that people do to earn money. For example, having the two people on the buses, the driver and the turn-style operator. Another one I noticed one night when we were leaving a bar and Steve was driving and this guy started directing him how to turn the steering wheel in order to get out of the car spot. It wasnīt a tight spot or anything, but he just provides that service and then knocks on the window and asks for some coins. And then there are people, some only kids, that ride around on a horse and cart and collect aluminium cans and cardboard which they can return somewhere for a small refund. Well, I think I've covered all the little points I'd jotted down that I wanted to share with you. Except for one little amusing thing that happened on my last night in Porto Alegre. Steve invited a couple of his mates around for a beer, and we were sitting there chatting, minding our own business and had a CD turned on the lowest possible volume that wasnīt silent. And a neighbour comes knocking on the door saying to turn down the music. Wierd. So, all in all I had a very amusing time in Porto Alegre, just by being observant, and very little else. It was so nice to not have to live out of a suitcase for a week, be able to go to the fridge when I wanted to, be able to come and go as I please, be able to speak English, all these little nicities that are so appreciated after travelling. So Iīd like to say a huge thank you to Steve and Fe for being so hospitable and for including me in all their plans whilst I was there. And one last thing (again), I recieved an email from Arjan, the Dutch guy who I was trekking with at Aconcagua. He didnīt make it to the summit due to unfavourable weather conditions, but he said that 2 men died in the couple of days after I left, and one of the French guys that we were trekking in parallel with had to get evacuated by helicopter because his lungs got water in them. Scary! Well, until next time folks, take care of yourselves, Nique