When it came time to leave the crazy city of Rio de Janeiro, we did so on an extremely fancy bus which had us acting like kids at Christmas. I had heard the rumours about the luxurious Brazilian bus travel and we soon realised why the tickets had cost a small fortune. Without knowing, we had booked the Leite - the most luxurious of them all.

It was like a first-class flight and we were acting like right tourists, photographing ourselves on the reclining, plush chairs and opening up the cuddly blankets supplied by the bus company as if they were presents. And then when we realised there were snacks involved, well that was just the icing on the cake.

I knew it would be the last time I´d be excited to be spending 12 hours on a bus, so I thought why not enjoy it. Unfortunately a man with an infuriating and persistent cough would keep me up all night, putting a damper on the luxury of the situation as he splattered all over my poor head. I could feel the germs setting up camp on my face. Sniff.

But I was pretty relieved to see the back of Rio de Janeiro. I was happy to have had the experience and some of the sights we saw will stay with me forever. Most of all I think it was an eye-opening start to the trip and a good way to really appreciate the Land of the Long White Cloud.

Tune in next time when I´ll tell you about our swanky hotel in Curitiba, and finding monkeys in the middle of a city park - muy interesting!

Check out more photos from my trip in my Flickr album.

Read more about Rio de Janeiro.