So we’re sat in an airport waiting for our flight to Salvador, half way up Brasil’s northeastern coastline. We’ve decided to speed things up a bit recently and we`ll only be in Salvador for three days before we get on another flight to go even further north, where we`ll meet the Amazon River and continue our journey by boat.

There’s a couple of reasons why we’ve decided to speed up our travelling through Brazil, mainly so that we can spend at least a week chilling out in the Caribbean before we fly home! Because we ain’t going to be able to have a holiday for a long time! And the other reason is that we are so bloody annoyed with the buses in this country, more on why further on.

After we said our goodbyes to the family in Rio we all went our separate ways and we headed to Ouro Preto, which as a very old colonial village in the state of Minas Gerias, famous for precious stones and gold mines. We spent a couple of days there, and visited the gold mine, that only closed in 1985, it was pretty cool, we saw some ‘fools gold’ down there, but apparently there isn’t much real gold left, in just under 300 years of the gold mine being open they got about 35 tons of gold out, doesn’t sound like much to me.

When we decided to leave Ouro Preto, this is when our real beef with the buses began. The ticket office opened at 7pm, so we went down there, 7pm sharp, to find out times for buses to the coast for the next day, as we arrived there was someone in the queue in front of us, just about to be served. When the chap had been served the attendant behind the counter closed the hatched and left, ignoring our protests. He then explained that he will open again at 8pm. Oh right thanks, so you serve one person, sod the rest of the people queuing. We were Vexed. Thanks to Nobby we got the bus to the next town in the morning, and then found out we had a 4 hour wait in the bus station before our bus to the coast.

After the night bus to the coast we arrived in the resort town of Porto Seguro, which seemed quite nice, we found a pleasant hotel and although we only planned on staying 2 nights, we ended up staying 3 as we both caught a bout of dodgy-belly-syndrome, not sure what from. Anyhoo, we wanted to get down to the little town of Trancoso as we`d heard good reports about the little place, (thanks Fraser!) The bus stopped out side our hotel it was packed out, we managed to squeeze on with our packs at the front, almost sat on the drivers lap. It was when we came to get off the bus at the ferry terminal that once again the stupidity of the Brasilian transport system was upon us again. The driver refused to let us out of the doors at the front of the bus, yes the ones we were crushed against for most of the journey. Instead he insisted that we fight through the crowded bus and get off at the back door. In my best Portuguese I said “Listen fatty, you really expect me and my good lady here to scramble through that lot, with all these bags, when my arse has been vibrating on this door right here for the last 30 minutes?”. There was no way around it, what a bloody idiot. So in the end, we left our bags at the front of the bus, scrabbled past all the people in the aisle, went through the stupid turnstile in the middle of the bus (that’s another thing) past the conductor, who sits manning the turnstile all day, through another crowd of people and then finally 10 minutes later through the back doors. Then, I walked back to the front on the bus, fatty opened the door I got on, stood exactly where I had been for the last 30 minutes, picked up our bags and got of the bus at the front door and then missed the first ferry.

After all that we finally arrived in Trancoso and managed to spend a pleasant afternoon on the beach, and then had a fantastic meal in the evening. Trancoso is a great little place, massively touristy, so a bit more expensive than elsewhere, but a cute little village with lots of colourful buildings and great little bars and restaurants. We liked it there, shame we only had one night.

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