Iguazu to Rio

Alright so how bad could the bus be right? We had booked semi~cama and the bus from Santiago to BA was pretty good really . . . We got up early and grabbed 2 taxi´s that took us right across the Brazilian border and dropped us at the bus station. There is a time change when you cross Brazil but we knew about that and were still plenty early for our bus. We saw a few buses come and go and none of them looked like the previous one we had been on but they weren´t the worst . . . then we layed eyes on our bus . . . let´s just say, we knew we weren´t in Kansas anymore! The bus was very old, when we turned to the right, the left side would make this loud rattling noise . . . the seats had lots of leg room and leaned back pretty far but you couldn´t recline it all the way as there was no foot rest to brace yourself from the weaving traffic (shall we call it). Our bus was the milk run and made a stop every few hours which was okay except we were sitting near the bathroom and let´s just say, I was glad I was sick and couldn´t breath! People got on and off at different stops we made and Rio Couldñ´t come fast enough! On the plus side, the countryside was beautiful! Brazil is very very green, everything looks like a rainforest. There are lots of police checkpoints that we went through however on one we actually had police get on the bus, collect everyone´s IDs and passports and run them through the computer, a family got pulled and the guy never got back on . . . not sure what that was about, the police kept updating us, but well, portugese is kicking our butts so we had no idea what they were saying! When we arrived in Rio the next day we felt pretty beaten! We then had to get on another bus which was 4 hours to Paraty where we would hit the beach! Fortunately we got 4 tickets for the 4 o´clock bus but 2 of us had to stay behind for the 8 o´clock bus which me and my brother did since, well, I am use to sleeping in bus stations and quite frankly I slept okay on the bus because, well, I can sleep pretty much anywhere (5 airports, 3 train stations and now 3 bus stations). The bus from Rio to Paraty was really really nice though (where were you on the way to Rio?) and unfortunately it was dark when we went at 8pm but we could tell it was really really beautiful. What was cool though, there was a lightening and thunder storm along the way that was happening on our side of the bus, I watched that pretty much the whole way there! When we got to Paraty, the place was deserted, except for some scray people sleeping in the bus station, we jumped in a cab though and made our way to the hostel, safe and sound!