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Hi!
Sorry I haven't written a blog in a while. It's been pretty hectic for the last few weeks in South America and now I'm in New Zealand where the internet is very expensive! This will have to be a quick blog because I don't have long left.
Ok, so we made it to Uyuni after a horrible horrible bus journey. It's such a desolate place. It basically only exists because of tourists going to the salf flats. Anyway, we managed to get on a tour for the next day and left at 10:00. First we drove to a train graveyard where there are lots of rusting remnants of trains no longer needed to export the salt from the area. After that we drove out into the salt flats and had lunch at the first ever salt hotel. The salt flats are such an odd landscape. Really strange! It feels like another plannet.
After lunch we drove to an place called Fish Island. It's a mound in the middle of the salt flats created from fossilised coral left from when the area was a shallow, tropical sea. We saw a coral archway and had the chance to make some of those strange perspective pictures people always do when they come to places like this. We managed to get a really good video of us all crawling into a pringles tube!
The tour was 3 days long. We also got to stay in a salt hotel one night, which was an odd place. We saw lots of lagoons of different colours due to the minerals dissolved in them. We saw an impact crater on the side of a hill from an asteroid and geysers.
After Uyuni we crossed the boarder, which took a while, into Argentina. We went to a place called Salta, in an area famous for its wine production. Us girls hired a car for the day and travelled out to a town in the mountains in the centre of the wine district. We went wine tasting and got a tour of a brewery. We also got to try wine flavour ice cream! The drive there and back was beautiful.
After salta we went straight to Iguazu. The first day we saw the falls from the Argentinian side. I fel bad for rushing this as it's so hard to express how amazing they are. They're incredible. It feels like a fantasy world almost, with the huge waterfals, the bright green vegetation, the clowds of mist and rainbows.
The next day we saw the falls from the Brazillian side. Although the Argentinian side is amazing I prefered the Brazillian side. You get an incredible view from beneath the falls of all of them at once. You can get really close underneath and get soaked by the spray. They really are impressive.
After Iguazu we travelled to Buenos Aires to have 6 nights there. I loved Buenos Aires. We went on a couple of walking tours to a couple of different districts and went to a brilliant market. We were also there for the first England game, which wasn't great! And also for the Argentina game, which was good to watch in the city. We had an evening out at a tango show, which I loved. The others got a tango lesson beforehand, which I couldn't do because of my foot, and then a show while eating a brilliant meal. The tango was so so good! We also had a night out to a famous restaurant which some say have the best steaks in Argentina. I loved my meal of a veggie skewer and everything came with tonnes of dips and sides. I got to try my first quails egg too!
On the 14th we flew out of Buenos Aires into Auckland in the noth isnland of NZ. We lost a day, which really confused us and our body clocks! The first day there I had to spend visiting the hospital and then a doctor about my foot, so I didn't get to do much else. The next day however I went for a wander round. I really like Auckland. It's such a clean, open city. At least the bits I saw were. The harbour is nice. I also went to the museum and saw an impressive collection of Maori artifacts, including the biggest canoe surviving today.
After pickking up our campervan, which had been named Norman, we travelled to the Bay of Islands. We got a boat ride around the Bay and learnt about the history of the area and some of the myths surrounding the bay.We also got to go through the imaginatively named 'hole in the rock' which is a massive archway out in the bay. The next day we travelled North up the peninsula. We visited a Kauri tree forest and got to hug a huge Kauri tree. They supposedly are so full of energy that if you hug one they will cure you of many ills! It must have worked as my foot is almost better! We carried on up the coast to the Northern-most tip. It's a very important place to the Maori as they believe it's the place souls travel to to leave this world and go to the next. They also believe you can talk to your ancestors there. It's a beautiful area, very dramatic and windswept.
On the way back we stopped off at what many locals call the best fish and chips in the world! The chips were good, I couldn't comment on the fish, although I wouldn't say they were the best in the world!
Anyway, I'm now in Rotorua. We went to a Maori show last night and ate a traditional ground-cooked meal. Unfortunately I'm about to rn out of time so I have to go. It was brilliant though!
xxx
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