Rain, Roulette and Rio!

How are you all? Long time and no speak so I hope you all have lots to tell us? As you can imagine we have been up to lots since our last email and have managed to get across three continents...we are in Argentina at the moment.

Last time we emailed we were just off to Fiji for a week to try and lose our new geeky image and top up our very faded tans. We arrived in Nadi on the main island at midnight and it was hot and sticky but raining...we weren´t too worried by this...it´s fiji, we told ourselves...hot desert island paradise. Sure enough when we got up early the next morning the sun was out so we hopped on the bus which was to take us to the ferry and it wasn´t until we got to the port that we realised we were at the wrong port on the other side of the island. Not a great start especially as neither of us had a clue how to pronounce the name of the port we were suposed to be at, how to get there and most importantly how to say all that in Fijian. Once we had eventually found a taxi driver who spoke a little English he set off at a snails pace chuckling all the way there about how late we were going to be. Great.

We eventually made it on to the boat and arrived at the Octopus resort on Waya Island and it was everything we had been hoping for, beautiful golden sands, lovely rooms with flowers on everything (pillows, towels, sink and even toilets!) and hammocks eveywhere. For dinner there was a big barbeque and drinking games, where I managed to win in the girls competition (Alex lost miserably in the boys). Unfortunately, just as we went to bed it started to rain....and when we woke up the next morning it was still raining and it didn´t stop for the rest of the week, at one point there was even talk of a tornadoe. As you can imagine there is very little to do on a desert island when its throwing it down...we couldn´t even have hot showers because the heating was solar! Also the rain brought all the little (or not so little) beasties to find shelter in our rooms, the worst of which was a moth the size of a small bird which was so big you could actually hear it flying around the room in the dark....arrrrgh!! Luckily we met a really nice couple, Andrew and Anna and we ended up having a lovely time but sadly remained as pasty as we arrived.

The next continent was North America,and we decided to spend four days at the culture capìtal of the world........LAS VEGAS! Flying from Nadi to Vegas was the longest day of our lives...literally. We set off at 11pm and arrived at 3pm on the same day we set off (and that was after a ten hour flight) making it a whopping 42 hour day, our body clocks lost the plot completely. But who cares, we were in Vegas where sleeping is cheating anyway so we got stuck in. The whole time we wre there we only spent a measley $11 on betting (lost the lot straight away and gave up) but spent hours wandering round the weird and wonderful hotels and super expensive shopping malls. We stayed at the very tacky (we loved it) Circus Circus casino hotel which has 24 hours acrobat shows and 24 hours Krispy Kremes stand, what more can you ask for?? While we were in Vegas, the new $2.7BILLION casino opened at midnight on one of the nights and the queue went for 2km down the strip. We went along to laugh at the losers in the queue, and ended up queuing ourselves.

As well as all the free shows, we decided to push the boat out and go to one of the huge Vegas extravaganza shows. Four of the biggest hotels have Cirque Du Soleil shows so we found the cheapest one (at least that is why Alex told me we had chosen the one we did). It was in a very posh theatre with a respectable looking audience so we were both a little surprised when five minutes into the show all the female dancers apeared topless and stayed like that for the rest of the show. Alex thoroughly enjoyed the performance and claims it was payback for years of having to sit through ballets and musicals.

Before we set off for South America we had two days in LA, we took a tour of the city where we got to walk along Hollywood Boulevard, visit the Chinese and Kodak Theatres, use my binoculars to spy on the stars (unfortunately I couldn´t see Jennifer Aniston). Downtown LA we saw the millions of tramps setting out for the day in their luxury two men tents (only in America) and witnessed the one man SAVE J-LO campaign in full swing, (some nutter who believes there is a CIA plot to kill J-LO?) We saw the beautifully weird people of Venice beach, home of Baywatch (naturally we were mistaken more than once for Pam and Hasselhoff). Ruth found her soul mate, a homeless guy wearing a sign saying "Best wino in the world" and singing to us to help him get drunk, we obviously helped the poor guy along the way. We then headed to Beverley Hills and Rodeo Drive, where the average customer of one shop spends $100,000 per visit. Ruth could barely control herself as we passed the Regent Beverley Wiltshire and kept singing Pretty Woman for the next hour. She only stopped when our lovely tour guide took up microphone and burst into a rendition of Imagine by John Lennon, with all the talent of a Pop Idol reject. We were in stitches!!!

This brought us to are third and final continent, South America and first stop Rio de Janeiro. We spent a week in Ipanema (the poshest part of course) and never wanted to leave. We ate like kings (probably could have done without expanding our waists anymore), sun bathed like Brazilians on Copacabana beach (the Speedos were resurrected) and drank caipirinhas until the early hours. Rio was also the location of our return to extreme sports, and this time it was Ruth that led the way......hanggliding off a mountain over Rio. It was an unbelievable experience, floating over the city in complete silence (I especially loved it, as it was my first peace and quiet from Ruth since we´ve left home). However, the funniest part of the day was watching Ruth practice running off the edge of the cliff, anybody who´s seen Ruth run will appreciate this spectacle.

You all know how much Alex loves sports (and I do not) so I am sure you can all picture how pleased I was to hear that it was the FIFA Beach World Cup at Copacabana while we were there and even more thrilled to find out that the tickets were free so there was no excuse for us not to go. I have to say though it was the best sporting event I have ever been to. We watched Brazil vs Thailand, surrounded of course by speedo wearing Brazil fans all singing and dancing to a crazy samba band in the boiling sun....beats bovril and a meat pie at boundary park any day! Also I didn´t see one scrap of footie cos the crowd were so funny but Alex assures me the football was amazing and I did get to see Eric Cantona.

We then stopped off at Sao Paulo on the way to the Iguazu falls, but both were hit by the effects of the Yellow fever jabs and didn´t venture far from the hotel. The city is massive (nearly as many people live there as in the whole of Australia) and although we had a good walk around we didn´t even scratch the surface.

The Iguazu Falls are incredible and as one American said "it´s the most powerful force of nature I´ve ever witnessed", (very cheesy, but actually very true). We spent one day on the Argentine side and another day on the Brazilian side looking at the hundreds of waterfalls and the lush green rain forest. Both days were boiling hot, so we decided to take a boat trip on the river and to see the falls more closely. We didn´t realise quite how close we were going until the boat went through one of the largest waterfalls, and we got soaked before spending the next 2 hours on a bus wet through to our speedos.

As we said before, we have just arrived in Buenos Aries and again living like kings, 600g steaks for 2quid and red wine by the bucketful for even less. So far South America has been even better than we were told or imagined. The people are unbelievably friendly and even find in themselves to laugh at our attempts at spanish and our desperate sign language. Watching Ruth flap her arms, whilst pretending to be airplane in front of a perplexed Brazilian air stewardess has been one of the highlights of the trip.

We´ve got a few more adventures planned so will let you know how we get on, but as alway please keep us infiormed of what you´re all upto.