It´s a New Year!!

First off, Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!!! We hope that you had a great holiday season!!!

We haven´t written much since that whole episode with Andi´s leg being swollen etc? Well, ends up that he had thrombosis (a blood clot) in his leg, which we found out when we got to Rio and so the last few weeks have been him doing the necessary treatments, doctor visits etc to get his blood back on track and deal with the clot!!

So, in Santa Cruz Bolivia we got on a bus for 48 hours to Rio de Janerio

24 hours into the 48 hour journey to Brazil

 and from the first minute I stepped off the bus I fell madly and deeply in love with that city!!

Rio!!!!

It felt like life in Rio (or at least Ipanema the area we were staying in) is much easier, much slower and much more fun than normal life. All the men walk around with flip flops, shorts and no shirt, and the women with loose dresses or shorts and bikini tops. The bars and the beaches are always full and the people are always smiling. We spent a lot of time on the beach (since Andi was not allowed to walk around) instead of doing the main `touristy`sightseeing things and that was fine for me! Mom-you would have LOVED the people watching on the beach!




Andi on Copacobana Beach


We also had to cancel our trip to Ubatuba for Christmas as Andi was put on 5 days of bedrest, and luckily we found a hostal since almost all of the hostels\hotels had been booked up for months for the xmas-new year time, and the new hostel we found ended up being full of really cool people and we all got together to have a BBQ on Christmas day which Andi was fortunatly able to get out of bed for.

Christmas BBQ at the hostel

But, unfortunatly after 5 days of bed rest and having to take shots, we were once again disappointed with the doctors in South America when Andi´s blood test came back worse than it was before the bedrest and the `specialist`realized that he had forgotten to give him an important medicine during this time! Fed up as we were we just hopped on the next bus to Sao Paulo where a good friend of Andi´s brother lives and has been taking WONDERFUL care of us since! She took us to a doctor that we acutally felt we could trust (and has proved to be trustworthy) and has helped us to get all the medicine that he has needed over the last few weeks. Also, she planned a great weekend in the Sao Paulo countryside for New Years for us and another couple friend of hers in a cute little family run hotel in a very cute little town.

Rafael, Camila, Betty, Roni and Andi on New Years Eve

It was nice to just relax and enjoy the scenery there, on New Years Eve we went to some small `secret`waterfalls where we swam and `washed the old year away`to help prepare for the new one, and on New Years we went to the town square for fireworks. After midnight the family who runs the hotel had dinner ready for us and we feasted our way into the early morning of 2011!!

Brazilian countryside

Then on the 2nd we went to an adventure park where Camila, Andi and I went zip-lining, it was the first time Ive ever done it and it was soo much fun!!! (despite the heavy rain!!)

me zip-lining about 2 seconds after the pic the rope smashed me in the face

Now, we are back in Sao Paulo with Camila and her family (Thank you SO much for all you have done for us!!!) until Andi gets the ok to travel. He will have one more blood test on Tuesday and when things are better we will be flying to Buenos Aires on Wednesday for a few days before taking off to Santiago for our final days on mainland South America! WOW how time flies!!!!