buen dia

Yesterday was a very long day. We started by waiting for some of our group to fly in a helicopter over the falls and then we visited the Brazilian side of the falls. The views were just as pretty from that side. You can not get as close, but you look at a full landscape of waterfalls. The rainbows were awesome, but like Machu Picchu, there were lines and lines of people. After viewing we waited for our group to eat a snack.

~We are starting to see the differences between traveling in a group and on our own. The group is great. There are 15 of us all together including our leader, MEgan. We are the only group from the states and there is a mother/daughter, brother/sister couples, singles and friends. We all get along, but the group is pretty quiet. It is great having someone work out all the transportation and any problems that may arise, but traveling with the group means you don´t have many choices and there is a lot of waiting around.

So back to the story... we traveled so much after visting the falls. We didn´t get into bed last night until 1 a.m. First we took a bus to the airport and then plane to Sao Paulo. Although we did not see much of Sao Paulo, we saw some of the shanti towns in the surrounding areas. Sao Paulo is about 26 million people big, is mostly is business city and has lots of poverty. We took a bus from there to Paraty, which is about a 4 hour drive. We got a flat tire about 5 minutes before reaching our hotel and had to stand in the rain while they changed it. When we arrived at our hotel they were´t expecting us until tonight, so we walked across the street to another place. We are back at the first hotel for breakfast this morning. It is not sunny now, but we hope to head to the beach or take a boat ride today.