The coach journey was actually pretty decent, on time and quite comfortable. The seats are very similar to the old-style British Airways club class seats for anyone that used them, i.e. they recline back a long way and have decent legroom. The bus was only about 1/5th full anyway, so there was plenty of room to spread onto other seats. It would stop about every 4 – 6 hours for you to get off and get some food, stretch your legs etc, the only problem being that you have to guess the length of time that the steward tells you when you get off, as it varies from stop to stop. There was one heart-stopping moment when the coach disappeared off the stand after a few minutes (with me not on it….), but it came back, PHEW! Presumably they took it for fueling or something. Only once did they hit the brakes so hard that everybody ended up sitting one row forwards from where we were, my guess is this is not bad by Brazilian driving standards!
The weather here in Florianopolis is absolutely gorgeous, bright sunshine in cloudless skies, and the beaches are beautiful and bright blue, the only problem is it gets a little cool down here in the evenings, so there’s nobody about at the beaches really. So I decided to stay in town in the end, in a quality hotel that the owner proudly has had in his possession for 44 years (and not touched a thing in that time, evidently, paintwork included. The lift is one where someone has to come in and crank a handle for you to get it to move). The town is nothing that special really, as such I’ve decided to move on and tonight’s bus is just 16 hours to get me to Foz do Iguaca on the Argentinian border. Today I played the “catch a random bus game” and ended up God knows where, but ran into some nice old lady in a bar who told me I needed to eat more (or at least I think that’s what she was trying to say)
I’ve also updated my itinerary – the new details are on the web site. On reflection I’ve decided to cut some time out of Oz and put more of it into SE Asia, I only had 4 weeks there after Bali, and have decided that may be too much of a rush. Now I’ve got closer to 7 I think, which should give me time to do all the countries with ease.