(Sing) The Copa, Copacabana (and other stories)

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Much has happened since the last blog! Like moving continents...

We left you in the smelly town of Rotorua, which in fact had some very impressive guysers. After that, we headed to our final destination in New Zealand, which was Auckland. As with most of the towns / cities in New Zealand, there wasn´t all that much to do. So, during our first full day in Auckland, we escaped to the Bay of Islands for a day trip (thus avoiding spending an entire day in Auckland!). The Bay of Islands is a bay which has...erm...well, literally lots of islands. The sun was out in full force though (hoorah!), and the scenery was absolutely lovely. Back in Auckland, we farewelled our buddies from the Kiwi Experience bus, and hopped on a plane to our new destination of Santiago in Chile.

After a 12 hour flight, Jack met us at Santiago airport; he had arrived a couple of days before us and had spent all that time trying to get on a bus back to the airport to meet the girls (buses stop wherever they want - there is no pattern!). Here, we would begin the South America leg of our trip as the 'Almighty Trio´. The temperature upon landing was an awesome 6 degrees = fairly chilly in Chile (Sorry - it had to be said!). Having donned fleeces and hats, we set out to explore the city a bit, and attempted some spanish in a patisserie. As luck would have it, the ordering system for patisseries in Chile happens to be one of the most complicated processes ever! You have to order your food at one point, pay somewhere else and then return to collect it in almost a completely different shop! Fortunately, our amazing espanol and acting skills got us through!

The next day, it turned out to be Chile´s national day (or something) - who knows. The Chileans were certainly out in force, and it was especially handy for us, as the couple of museums we had intended to visit anyway were free. So we headed to the Supreme Courthouse, where an orchestra was playing - you wouldn´t have known it was made up of children - very impressive (and awesome eerie acoustics = Jack´s helpful addition). Then we popped along to the pre-columbian art museum, where we saw many artefacts and lots of jugs? - we couldn´t fathom the reason for all of them but were happy making up our own renditions of ancient inca history (since there were no English explanations!). We also walked up to a high point over the city. The views of the snow dusted mountain range surrounding Santiago (albeit through all the smog) were simply stunning!

After just a few days here with a day trip out into a sleepy, yet beautiful, Chilean hill town (San Jose de Maipu), we braced ourselves for 2 connecting flights booked to Buenos Aires, and then Sao Paulo. We weren´t nearly satisfied with just two plane trips in a day, so we decided it would be a good idea to book another connection flight from Sao Paulo to Rio. At only GBP26, it seemed like madness to take the bus! So it was that 'The Day Of Three Flights´ commenced at 4 in the morning and ended, well, much later on. It didn´t go completely smoothly, either, since the first flight was delayed, the middle flight pretended to lose our luggage and the later flight was delayed also. By this time (only 7pm but seemed like so much later) the whole day felt like a strange dream! Luckily for us, we were greeted in Rio´s airport by a man selling popcorn - wahoo this country is awesome (says Heloise)!!! The sugar rush lasted only until it started to rain - I know, it shouldn´t rain in Rio, should it? Thus we arrived at our hostel looking like semi drowned rats.

Rio is an absolutely fascinating city. The antithesis of wealth and poverty is so overwhelming and the topography just takes your breath away!! The sun was out for a few days and the water was actually quite warm (although with extremely strong rips!) at our very own Copacabana beach (twas off season - hooray!). We dabbled in some markets, hit the party town of Lapa (thanks Alessandro for being such a good friend/guide!), and took a motorbike tour of the favellas (300,000 people living on a tiny hillside all squashed in (see photos below and the film ´City of God´) and ruled by drug lords with huge guns (apparently one of the safest places to live...right!)). I could go on for hours but I´ll leave it at that...

We write to you after a fairly impressive 21 hour bus journey from Rio to the incredible Iguacu waterfalls - no amount of cake can help you here! There are apparently 275 80m-high waterfalls in Iguacu and when you add a pretty good sunset, you´re camera´s memory stick will never be big enough! - Wow!

Right, so our next step is off down to Uruguay to save some juvenile green sea turtles...as you do!

To be continued...again...

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Comments

[paul]

where are the photos?
am i missing something?