Melia Pereira

... had 2 hours until we reached Sao Paulo.<br><br>When we reached Sao Paulo I turned on my phone and it found a local carrier. It worked!! wheeeeeeeee!!<br><br>I progress thru customs and made my way along the glass covered corridor. I saw my first palm tree close up and smiled. I was in frigging Brazil!! I texted Rafa and let her know I had landed and was safe.<br>

... the 8 hour bus ride from Bogota (where we'd stopped long enough to have breakfast at Dunkin Donuts - our travel diet is in good shape) to Pereira. In these horrific bus situations Renee prefers not to watch the driving, but I feel compelled so, in the event of the bus speeding headfirst into an oncoming truck, in my last seconds I can swear profusely at the driver. Despite driving that would make Mad Max soil himself however we managed to arrive safely ...

... 8221; is circling my brain like a greyhound - apologies). Instead, you feel, as Lopez feels, the compassion for this tortured soul, whose ability to enjoy and nurture his unique gift is being taken away by his own brain. And then you equally feel the discomfort &#8211; the &#8220;otherness&#8221; of this man, how intimidating it can be to feel as though any second you will say or do the wrong thing and not only will you not be politically correct (an everpresent ...

This morning we were rewarded with a nice cooked breakfast and were able to take our time getting ready for our 9am departure. On arrival at reception we were told we had to first catch a taxi to the tour operators office. We weren't expecting that but it was not a problem. We hailed a taxi within seconds and 10 minutes later were at the office.<br><br>There were quite a few tours available that we weren&#8217;t aware of, but we were just going to relax at the thermal pools ...

... at $50mil pesos, hot water, TV,wifi, private bathroom without gaps over doors, and included breakfast, better than any of our recent hostel stays. The receptionist, Jose, also had some tours we could do. One was to visit the nearby thermal baths at Santa Rosa which we had heard about yesterday. It was an all day tour and we had just missed the bus which left at 9am, it was 9-30am. We decided to visit Manizales and maybe go to the thermal baths tomorrow. We ...

... some ideas to modify the pathway. The Coffee Plantation was extremely interesting and took well over an hour. In the tour we were introduced to the different types of coffee, and the process for making the coffee, certainly worth the visit, although later we were to find that it cost us $4mil pesos each, something we would prefer to know in advance, we put it down to an oversight, it was worth the visit.<br><br>Our host also mentioned two ...

... farm, lovely walk down the valley for an hour and half until we arrived at Finca Don Elises, 75 year old man waiting to give us a tour, nicest man ever, showed us his eco garden which consisted of everything from banana trees and green banana trees, green bananas are served with all food here (deep fried of course) and the other bananas ...

... never managed to meet cause they happened to be somewhere else, so we had to look for stuff to do there by ourselves in which happened to be a very ****** night. We arrived there, got a cheap hostel and got ready to see what was going on in the night just to find out that nothing was going on. Only the streap-tease ...

... like my body needed tor ecover but oh no, I ahd to get up. At the bright time of 9:30 am, I had to endure 3 hours of race relations in Brazil!!! Repetition over repetition over repetition, I know that the US is different than Brazil OK? After orientation I took a nap...hehe I was obviously tired and I went to go see a Brazilian indie film, "O ano em que meus pais sairam des ferias," or "The year my parents went on vacation." It is about a little boy that is left home while ...

... living a constant downgrade (quality lies in the eyes of the beholder right??) Anyway, Sao Paulo is a HUGE city. You can look out the window of any highrise and see tall, narrow apartment buildings as far as the eye can see in any direction. Our first night we were directed to an Irish pub, where we tossed back a few with the Delta crew from our flight (random) and met a Paulistano named Mauro who spoke English ...