Silly Billies Return to Roam

On Wednesday we landed in Stockholm airport, after flying over a white land. Snow and ice covered Sweden and it was hard to believe only a day ago we had been in sunny Brazil. We stepped off the plane to an icy blast; but it wasn't long before we were back on a cozy Swedish train on our way to Borlange. We were so excited by the white cold landscape before us. By 3,30 it was dark, so we crunched up the front steps of Alistair's place in Borlange and located the key for the his stuga. We woke up early to pack our vast mountains of gear into a vaguely transportable form and lugged it down to the train station via the bus. Once there we caught a train for 2 hours to Mora, and from there a 5 hour bus trip to Ostersund. In Ostersund it was beautiful and white with little christmas lights everywhere. We stayed in the 'train station hostel' (thank goodness there was one close!). Early the following morning we boarded the train for Trondheim and arrived here just as the sun set...

I looked out the cabin window to the arid planes of outlying Fortaleza disappearing below me. Slowly they transformed into more scrub covered hills and eventually onto a huge blue harbour. We landed in Salvador and waited in the airport for the arrival of Jorge and Rafael, our Brazilian friends who were going to lead us on this crazy adventure. Once we had all gathered in the airport, with the help of some super friendly locals Dilton and Casseo (organisers of the adventure race Brazil Wild) we were dropped off at the ferry terminal to Itacare. The sun was shining out across the harbour as we boarded the boat and a group on the ferry were beating out some great samba music to accompany us across. From Bom Dispachio on the other side we caught a 2 hour taxi ride to Camamu. By that time it was dark and Rafael had preorganised a jet boat to take us the final distance to the little beach villiage of Barra Grande. We sailed in across the still bay to twinkling lights on the shore and disemb...