Day 14: Call Me JoJo

14.01.09: Got up nice and early after a surprising restful sleep and headed to the border. I was first to be stamped through and I headed to the nearest bank to get some Brazilian Reals. Only the bank doesn't take foreign cards, so now I'm in the back of a shared taxi on the two-hour journey to Boa Vista on a wing and a prayer and a promise that I'll pay the taxi driver after we find a bank that will take my cards. Luckily enough for me, I'm sitting next to a particularly yummy mummy from Brazil who keeps breast feeding her six month old baby Jojo. Not the most unpleasant seatmate of the Odyssey I have to say. Oh, she's doing it again - don't look, don't look, don't... oh, bugger it, this is GREAT! Welcome to Brazil! It's almost enough to make me…

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Day 13: Sorry, We’re Closed!

13.01.09: Woke up in Mario's house. His family had been so accommodating, taking in a big ginger stray like me for the night and looking after me on my trip through Venezuela. I can't thank them enough. I headed back to the bus terminal and jumped on the first bus to Santa Elena on the border with Brazil. Oh, you might be looking at the map and wondering why I can't just enter Guyana from Venezuela. I wondered that too. Well, that would be because Venezuela for some god-only-known reason thinks that it owns Guyana. Yep - it's marked on maps and ‘Land to be reclaimed'! Never mind that it has been a British colony since 1796 (before then it was Dutch and before then Arawak - the native people of the land). Never mind that it has never been Venezuelan, ever, or that it's people…

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