Thursday 11 September/ Friday 12 September

Thursday we hit some of the shopping centers, mainly to exchange money, buy some SMS cards and a memory card for Jan's camera. Money was the easiest job. Now we are in Brazil with Rials and we divide by 2 here! We tried to get money at the bank but they dont exchange money. They are so tight on security here. To go into the bank you put your keys, phone wallet etc through a drop box, go through the revolving doors that are metal detectors, pick up all your stuff from the drop box, and proceed to do your banking! Armed security everywhere and the security in the shopping centres have bullet proof vests on!!! (Are missing information about threats??)
Very little English is spoken anywhere around here so it was quite difficult to make ourselves understood to buy SMS cards. But one entrepreneurial sales assistant typed into his phone and we conversed with Google Translator! Oh the joys of Modern technology! So about an hour later as it was a very involved process, Jan was sorted as I had forgotten my iPad and didn't want to get the wrong card.We had to sort out the card, go to the "box" to pay, (cashier...don't know how the term box became involved!) register the card, back to the box to pay for credit on the card and then register the payment. This was at the third shopping centre as Jan had an iPad air and needed a smaller card. Mind you it was 32c while we are walking to all the centers!
We came back to the hotel so I could get my iPad and then went to the shopping centre next door and sorted my SMS as the guy spoke a little English. Jan bought her camera card but we need to go back there now as it won't work in her camera. (Update...here when you buy an SD card you get a micro card and regular card and we couldn't figure out what the micro card was for until we took the card back this morning and the sales assistant put the micro card in the regular card! Problem solved!! Camera now can take pictures.
Shock shock...no photos taken yesterday!