We have begun our last leg of our round the world adventure! We have 6 weeks left and everything to come sounds amazing so I´m very excited!

Last Sunday we had the day in Auckland. It was a beautiful day so it meant we could walk around and explore the city a bit. We went down to the marina and had a coffee whilst watching all the boats go by and then went to a Sunday market. We wanted to go up the sky tower but it was very expensive so we just took a photo of it instead lol! Auckland was a really small but really nice city, the only place in New Zealand that felt modern!

Last Monday was when we had the same day twice which felt a bit strange. We got our flight from Auckland to Santiago at 4.20pm on the 31st and then after a couple of hours in Chile got a flight from Santiago to Buenos Aires at 4.20pm on the 31st! So it was a very long day and when we arrived at the hostel in Buenos Aires we were exhausted!

Tuesday was a great day though. The hostel we stayed at did walking tours of different areas of the city so we decided to go to La Boca with them. There were about 20 of us and our guide Hydie a girl in her 20s took us on the bus to La Boca. It´s famous for the colourful buildings there, and is quite a dangerous area apart from the 3 cobbled streets that is the tourist area. Right next to it is the biggest favela in Buenos Aires so we were told not to stray past the 3 streets! There were lots of restaurants and coffee shops outside on the cobbles and we had a BBQ lunch before going to the La Boca football stadium which is aparently famous. It had huge metal fencing between the seats and the pitch as there is so much violence there. We got the bus back to the hostel and then went to the oldest cafe in Bunos Aires called Cafe Tortoni which did amazing hot chocolate! We then got ready for our Tango lesson. It was just in the hostel, and some dancers came in to teach us the dance. It is originally a dance between sailors and prostitutes lol! That was really fun and then we went out to some bars and to a drum and bass club with a group from the hostel.

On Wednesday Jo and I went for a walk around the centre of the city when the obelesque is. The buildings are just stunning, they´re allbuilt in regency style and are 8-10 stories high with stone carvings and elaborate balconies and detail. We loved the feel of the city! In the afternoon we did a walking tour to Recolletta, the richest district of Bunos Aires...it was beautiful! The buildings there were even more elaborate and the streets were fairly quiet. We went to the famous graveyard there which was more like a town for the dead. Instead of being buried and having gravesones there were small houses like tombs on streets which depended on the families wealth as to how big they were. We saw where Evita is ´buried´ which was one of the smallest ones. In some of them there was a family of 14 coffins just on shelves! There was a guy who is going to Durham in September on the tour so we were chatting to him about it and we went to the most amazing steak restaurant. It was the best steak I have ever had, literally melted in your mouth! Dad and Jack you have to go there just to try it!

We got to Rio on Thursday morning and went to a realy cheap hostel there which wasn´t very nice! We were in the Copacabama area which didn´t feel especially safe so we just went for a walk to the beach and then got back to the hostel before it got dark. We had the whole of Friday there so we jst went down to Copacabama beach and got a cocktail and lay on the beach for a bit. There really are girls in thong bikins and guys playing football and volleyball lol! We went for an early dinner and then got back to the hostel before it got dark again. A capoeira project group came to perform in the hostel, it was really cool to watch actually!

On Saturday we went straight to the nice hotel where we were joining the group later that day. It was so nice to be in a nice hotel room again! We met them at 7pm and went out for dinner with them. We are realy lucky with the group I think. There are 2 Swiss girls Sabrina and Rachel, a gay German guy Tim, an American guy Brandon who´s really geeky lol and then a couple from Cambridge Teresa and Chris who are so nice. So there are only 8 of us but we´re all between 20 and 25 which is good! Our tour leader Leon is from London and he has ADHD so he really is hyper and needs to be kept busy all of the time. He´s really fun though!

Sunday morning was an interesting experience! The 8 of us went to the biggest favela in Latin America! It was only 15 minutes drive and on a steep hill, I think there are over 200,000 people living in 1 square km! We all got on the back on motorbikes and got taken right to the top of the favela. I was first which was really scary as I couldn´t see anyone from the group and I didn´t know where he was taking me!! Finally everyone got to the top though which is where the drug lords main hang out is. They play loud music and do drugs all day I suppose and have fireworks at the ready to warn everyone if police are coming! We had a guide to take us down through the favela. It was a fairly rich favela though, which I know is an oxymoron but all of the buildings were built from stone unlike ones in other places in the world! It didn´t feel real walking down through it, it was hard to believe that people really live like this. All of their lives are dominated by drugs and it´s so dangerous. To pay for drugs sometimes people sell their rooves for other people to build on, and then they sell their roof, so all of the houses look very precarious! We actually went up on the roof of one house, going past a man with a huge machine gun guarding a room which was pretty scary! Half way down there was an amazing bakery, which looked totally out of place! This really nice guy baked loads of different cakes and sold other things in his shop too! As we got nearer the bottom it became less dangerous. We got a mini bus back to the hotel and then got on our way to Ilha Grande!

Monday was such a great day. We hiked for 2 and haf hours through the rainforest which was such hard work, and finally got to one of the most beautiful beaches I´ve ever seen. It´s called Lopez Mendez beach and has absolutely nothing there, no houses or restaurants, just a windswept beach. The waves on that side of the island were really rough as it was the Atlantic side so it was so hard to try and stand up in the water. We were there for 5 hours and played loads of fun games, volleyball and frisbee and then Leon set up beach olympics where we played flipflop throwing, bowling with coconuts and other silly games...he needed to be kept entertained lol! We got a littel fishing boat back from a beach just around the headland where the water was calmer and then went for dinner on the beach we were staying on.

Yesterday we got a boat back to the mainland and drove to Paraty. We had all afternoon do wander around the town which was really old with cobbled streets and so quiet! We went for a drink in the main square and then in the evening went to the beach and had dinner and drinks. Some of the group went to the rainforest in jeeps this afternoon but I´ve already done a couple of similar things in Malaysia and Thailand so I thought I´d save money for Igazu falls which is where we go tomorrow! It will be amazing so can´t wait!