Brazil Day 22 - Back to reality

I remembered to take a picture of the ferry this time.Today I returned from Ilha Grande to the mainland. Easy Transfers were proving anything but, as their usual ferry boat had broken down. The result was 60 people waiting on the jetty on the island and one fast boat seating 20. Obviously that meant 3 separate transfers, but happily the fast boat was very fast, with the crossing only taking 15 minutes or so compated to the 45 minutes of the slow boat. It was quite good fun as well.I had spent the morning mainly lazing around sniffing the free wifi of a nearby closed bar on the island. I took the opportunity to book a bus return from Rio to Sao Paulo and back for the 2nd semi-final, and booked a hotel in Sao Paulo at the same time. I rebooked the FIFA hotel I stayed in last time as I know where it is and am happy getting the media bus to & from the stadium for free.Booking a bus trip was massively complicated. I went through three different bus companies before finding one that would actually let me perform the transaction. I've booked myself onto a luxury bus which has plenty of space and only 3 seats across a row rather than the usual 4. This should give me plenty of space to enjoy the trip.Talking of trips, the minibus back from the ferry port of xxx was a bit of a mare. Once we had got to the mainland we had to hang around for a while as the other people were brought over. Once we were all together I jumped on the minibus heading for Rio and off we went.The roads are pretty crappy here. The main highway we were on had a surface that shook the minibus to bits. It was really pretty grim for a major road. Added to that was the things that had gradually deteriorated or broken and not been repaired such as crash barriers and lamp posts. This seems to be the case throughout a lot of the country that I've seen - stuff is built but people seem to forget to budget for upkeep and it gradually falls into disrepair.Hitting Rio at rush hour is also not to be recommended. The traffic was at a standstill, but our driver had been driving in Rio for 40 years and knew his way around. There followed a rather random route through the city that had all the passengers checking their smartphone maps to work out whether we were being abducted or not. Thankfully we weren't, and I was the second to be dropped off which was much better than sitting in the van for ages as it drove aimlessly around Rio to 12 different drop off points.Anyway, after all that I'm back at the ranch. I had dinner with Ben Queenborough and Marc Atkins who arrived a few days ago. We went to the excellent Bar Urca once again where I had a fantastic fish, onion, potato and rice thing which was very good indeed, and with beer came to about £20.I'm prepping for tomorrows Germany v France game right now, archiving old pictures to my external hard drive and getting captions and team lists ready. It should be a cracker at the Maracana. I'm not looking forward to the weather though, which promises to be 30C and full sun, and knowing the positioning situation I'm sure I'll end up in full sun for the duration of the game. Lots of water and factor 30 will be the order of the day I think.More tomorrow.