Brasilia, Brazil

We spent a morning having a tour around the main sights of the capital of Brazil, Brasilia. Pete assured us that a morning was plenty of time to see the city which was only formed in the 1950s making it a huge mass of concrete. The city was planned into sectors so there is an area for banks, supermarkets, hospitals, the government, cheap hotels, expensive hotels and then the different types of housing. If you took a bird's eye view of the city it would look like an aeroplane. We went to see the JK memorial where the founder of Brasilia has his tomb, we saw the first church in the city, visited a church with a lot of blue glass windows and a massive chandelier which was pretty amazing. Also on our quick city tour we saw the cathedral, the biggest flag pole and flag in Brazil, national congress with a huge square next door complete with a clothes peg like pigeon house. We finished the tour with a look at the extremely plain presidential palace and a quick jolly up the TV tower to get an over view of where everything is, in what is a very odd city!! Pete was right, Brasilia just needs a morning. It's a plain city with some unusual buildings but I can't imagine anyone wanting to live there as it really is a bit out of the way. It was however on our route and it was a great to have a quick stop.

For the last few days we have been travelling through the middle of south America and we are actually not too far from the Bolivian border. We have had a bit of an odd few days, having bush camped at a great little spot next to a lake, seen lots and lots of rain, lightning, we have also had to change our watches 3 times in 2 days, been first in line behind a motorbike accident, seen a lot more rain and had 2 nights in hotels as we just haven't made camp. The rain has put a halt on our attempts to get to the Northern Pantanal as the roads are just undriveable. Truck life continues and we are headed to a National Park a few hours down the road tomorrow for some more relaxation and to see some waterfalls which I should imagine will definitely have water in them!