LESSON TWO IN BRAZIL: NEVER ASK "HOW BAD CAN IT BE?"

Go travelling, they said. It will be fun, they said.

LESSON ONE IN BRAZIL: THE COURAGE TO CANCEL

When we first planned to come to South America almost a year ago, we listened eagerly as people gave us pearls of travel advice. Ironically, the more you hear that you need to be careful and flexible and maybe should go somewhere safer, the more you want to ignore the lot of them. So, even after a year of warnings, we never imagined that on Day ONE of our trip we would hastily be cancelling a flight, rescheduling weeks of our itinerary and missing out an entire country!