Hi everyone, After last weeks long email about Carnaval, this email is going to be short and sweet. I´m now on a Toucan tour called ´Altiplano´ which goes for 46 nights starting in Rio de Janeiro in Brasil, and finishing in Lima, Peru. So far I´m a little disillusioned with the tour, mainly because there is a lot of distance to cover, so many daylight hours are spent on the tour bus. Our days generally start with breakfast an hour before we are due to leave the camp site. We´re not supposed to attend breaky until our tent and packs are packed on the bus.  Then when all the breakfast gear has been packed away, we set off travelling all day, an hour or so for lunch, and a couple of toilet stops, usually arriving at the next camp site in the evening, and after setting up our tents and the kitchen tent, it´s usually dark. We´ve been split up into 7 groups and each group has a certain cooking duty day and a bus cleaning day. But no need to go into any detail about that. The bus is designed specifically for these overland trips with many compartments for the tents, seats, tables, stoves, packs, kitchen utensils, food, fridge, bar and so on, however it doesn´t have air conditioning, and the temperature has been know to rise into the mid thirties. Coupled with the unbareable humidity, it makes the trips very tiring. I try and read, but fall asleep easily,  even with all the windows open, it feels like you´re sitting next to a heater in the middle of summer. We have an Aussie tour leader called Brett, and a Scottish bus driver called Bill. The tour is running at it´s full capacity of 35 people, all between the ages of 18 and 44. A week before the tour started there was a single unfilled spot, but that was taken at the last moment by a young lad by the name of Nicholas Brennan. For those of you who don´t know, that´s Nicko with whom I was travelling for the first 6 weeks in Antarctica and Patagonia. So it´s awesome to have him back as a travel buddy along with the rest of the gang I´ve met on the tour. Hopefully the ratio of driving to seeing and doing will turn around when we get to Bolivia and Peru, but so far we´ve transitted through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina and seen and done very little. The first stop on our tour was a little town called Parati. Here we took a boat ride and went beach hopping and playing in the water for a day. It was a really great day... whenever we get to swim or play in the water, it´s a huge relief from the constant heat and humitidy. Several of the campsites we have stayed at have swimming pools. Even though the temperatures drop considerably at night, it still gets really hot and clammy in the tents. I sleep outside under a mosquito net whenever I can. Not that I think the mosquito net is overly useful. My legs look like I´ve got chicken pox, I´ve been absolutely eaten alive despite consitantly applying repellant. And it´s just too hot to wear long sleeve clothes. For me, the highlight of the tour so far was going to Iguazu Falls, both on the Argentinian and the Brasilian side. Even though I´ve seen big water falls before, I was still in awe at the size and power of this natural wonder. The rainforest environment surrounding the falls is beautiful and there were rainbows bouncing off the spray of the water. There are about 275 falls in total, and they´re all spectactular. We saw several little animals called Coates, which are kind of like ring tailed ant-eater racoon type mammals. Very cute, but also very reliant on the litter bins and scraps from the food serveries around the park. From the Argentinian side we took a zodiac, which is an inflatable rubber water craft, and went on a ride right underneath the spray of the falls. The humidity was just a killer, so getting absolutely saturated was very welcome. I felt that we were rushed through the park faster than I would have ambled through it myself, but these are some of the negatives that come with going on an organised tour. We were also taken to look at and watch a video about Itapu dam, a joint venture project between Paraguay and Brasil that provides 80% and 25% of the power for the two countries respectively, as well as being exported elsewhere. Although I can´t remember any other statistics now, I know I was really impressed with them at the time. We went to a bird park in Brasil which reminded me very much of the one in Singapore. Lots of Macaws and Toucans that you could pat and have sit on your arm, and many other varieties in cages. The park runs a very successful breeding program for many of the birds they hold in captivity. The landscape in Brasil reminds me quite a bit of Zambia and Uganda. Very green, not grasslands like in Australia, and not rainforest or bush or even jungle. Not really sure how to describe it, but it definately reminds me of those two African countries. In addition to the greenery, there´s lots of deep red soil. This is not similar to Zambia and Uganda though. In the cities of Brazil they have lanes marked on the roads, but they´re not used at all. In fact I think should Zeyde, my grandfather, ever choose to drive in Rio, he could quite easily be mistaken for a local driver. The right wheels of the car in one lane and the left wheels in the other lane, meandering between the outer boundaries of both lanes through the traffic. In Paraguay we visited some Jesuit ruins. They didn´t particularly interest me. Just a ruined brick church and the remnants of the surrounding community. We also spent a day in Ascencion, the capital of Paraguay, but I have nothing to say about that as I spent most of the day in the internet cafe writing about Carnaval. I will mention the dinner we had there. A large buffet style restaurant, which is not at all uncommon in South America. The system however left a lot to be desired. One is issued with a uniquely numbered card upon entering the restaurant, loads up there plate at the buffet, and passes past a check out to get to where the tables are. At the check out, the attendant enters the set price of the buffet against your card´s number on a computer. The same happens for desert. However, for drinks, the waiters come around to the table and take individual orders. Some record the order on a scrap of paper when you order, some when the drink is delivered. Others came around at the end of the meal and tried to allocate the number of beer bottles on the table to their own scrap of paper. Then, to get out of the restaurant, you go to another check out. The lady punches your card number into the computer and up comes your bill. However, due to the higglety pigglety of the drinks ordering system everyone had been charged for everything several times. One beer bottle on a table for six had appeared to be charged to each of the six people on the table. And this happened numerous times. Not being able to speak the language, it took ages for Brett, our tour guide to finally get everyone sorted out. It was a nightmare of an evening. Yesterday we arrived in Argentina. We´re in a place called Salta. Nothing overly special here. Nicko´s in an internet cafe next door writing some Perl code for a client back home whom he hasn´t yet informed that he´s left the country again. When he´s done, we´ll go on a walk or a cable car ride up a hill, and then we´ll go back to the camp site and probably swim in the pool that is almost the size of Lake Burley Griffin. It´s massive, and by no stretch of my imagination either. Well that´s all folks. Again, hope all is well back home. Nique