Jakey Jake

We were headed to Punta Del Este on the Uruguay coast. On the overnight bus we were pulled up at 4am because we didn’t have the stupid little pieces of paper saying we could leave Brazil …. Fools. We pulled into PDE at 7am and we looked for accommodation with AJ(another one) and Mark. We found a hotel about 6 blocks away which was to be home for 4 days. This place also had crappy beaches but it was pretty fun anyway. There wasn’t much to do except eat mcdonalds and go out at night. There was a little strip just near the marina where there were a bunch of bars next to each other. They weren’t clubs just a bunch of bars where you could chat, which was great. The first night out we ran into some Swedish guys that stayed in our hostel room in Foz. They were pretty kewl, but we had about 10 people and we wanted to go out clubbing. The club was MILES away but the cab meter was registering next to nothing. When we got there (over a funky bridge) the club was closed, so back to the bars we went. When we got back they pulled out a list and said that the charge was a LOT different to what was said on the meter. BASTARDS!!!! Still we had a good time. The next day adam and I hired scooters and cruised around the area. There were a lot of really nice places, we even saw a porsche that is really rare, the kind that james dean died in, lets just say they’re bloody expensive and rare as hens teeth. We hired mopeds and spent the day honing around punta del esta. We managed to clock the bikes a few times (100k’s was the speedos top speed), which doesn’t sound like much but if you got on one of these things and felt how bad their stopping ability or lack of brakes at all then you’d understand how much fun it was. Anyways we basically ran a muck running red lights, speeding past cops, cutting thru traffic and basically not really abiding by any road rules at all. Ahhhh being a gringo is sometimes fantastic. Since it was so expensive there we decided to head to the much famed Buenos Aires …. So we caught a bus to Montevideo and then a boat to BA The boat took 2 hours and the aircon was freezing cold. But we arrived by buquebus in the port of Buenos Aires

On the way back we ran into lochie at the bus stop, he was with his friend Christina. Luis had to leave that night so we said goodbye to him and hung out with Lochie and Christina, they were awesome fun. Christina was great company as she was one of the boys and would take all the crap we gave her. To paint a picture, chrissy is about 4′ nothing tall with a gigantic grin on her face all the time! We were constantly nailing her with short jokes and she took it in her stride (however small they were) and was just as good at giving it back. We met up with some of lochies local friends Gabi and Danni. We went out to a bar in the city and we had a ball, they played great tunes and mucked around dancing like idiots. We recovered the following day by eating all you can eat pizza which included a dessert of either brown or white chocolate coated pizza. We also went on a tour around the island in a hired car, which was manual, driven by lochie, who had only ever driven an auto. Needless to say it was a horrible experience, and adam and I couldn’t wait to get out of the car. We did some sand boarding near jaouquin beach (where they have the brazilian surf title((again an overrated beach)) and also went for a swim in the famed beach, but it was time to leave here too… just a word of advice, if anyone ever suggests you go sandboarding say no. It’s the type of sport that has .00000001% fun and the rest is just walking up really steep bloody sand dunes!

Florianopolis is a city on the ilha de santa catarina (island). We were heading for a small town on the island called barra de lagoa. Theres a small hostel there that we decided not to stay in because it looked pretty mankey, so we found a cheap hotel instead. The beach wasn’t anything to write home about, in fact none of the beaches in Brazil were even remotely as good as anything in Australia much to our disappointment. Anyway we were walking around that night and we ran into Luis from Salvador . That man was a woman eating machine!!!! He was always doing ground work, it was pretty funny to watch. Anyway we went out to a beach party on the Friday night and ended up at some club that we couldn’t get into because we had thongs on and no amount of “gringo, mucho dinero” would persuade them to let us in. The next night we went out to a fuhore dance club, it was 70% girls 30% old men, good odds, but unfortunately seeing as we were gringos and obviously couldn’t dace to save ourselves none of them were interested in dancing with us let alone talk to us, except a couple of girls who wanted to speak English, the next thing we new we were catching a cab with them to the top of the island for a beach party…. We eneded up crashing at their house nearby and went swimming all the next day.