Hola Senoritas and Senors from sunny South America. It´s nearly been 7 months since I left home and now I´m embarking on my last big adventure and it´s across a whole entire continent this time! I really don´t do things by half that´s for sure. So two weeks ago I left sleepy little New Zealand on a flight to Santiago, Chile. It was an 11 and half hour flight and I was dreading it but it actually went really quickly. I must be getting used to this flying malarky (needless to say this was about the 10th flight I´d taken on this trip!) I arrived in Santiago around midday which in NZ time was actually 3 in the morning - the flight might have been alright but the jeg lag was a killer. Anyway it wasn´t too daunting arriving in Chile because I knew that I would be meeting Romy at the hostel and she would be traveling with me for two weeks. It was great to see another friendly face and I was glad to see that she had brought some much needed supplies in the forms of Heat and In Style magazine! Santiago itself was pretty uninspiring as cities go and you only needed to spend a day there to have seen all it had to offer. After we found this out for ourselves we then had to find something to fill our time there with so we decided to take a day trip out to Valparaiso. All I really knew about Valpo was that it had lots of lovely colourful houses on a hill but to be fair there was slightly more than just that but only just! All that really stands out is the big harbour full of chaos and the old fashioned style trams whizzing about the town. It had a nice feel to it though - I couldn´t help comparing it to Spain. However, perhaps the best part of our visit to Santiago was the FOOD! Yes, it´s all about the food! Maybe I should rename the trip as ´Sarah´s culinary round the world extravaganza!´ We went to a restaurant called the Fat Cows (rather appropriate for me at the moment) where we chowed down on some awesome steak! And it probably tasted even nicer because it was so cheap too! It was definately a good way to end our last night in Santiago.

Buenos Aires was a hop and a skip away on the plane and our next stop. It was easy to see that BA was going to live up to it´s city status unlike Santiago. Apart from a disasterous first night (bed bugs - need I say more?) I absolutely LOVED BA. It was one of those places where you could easily waste hours and hours in little cobbled street cafes people watching. My favourite district in BA was San Telmo - it had a mixture of two of my favourite things too - music and shops! San Telmo was full to the brim with antique shops, it was like getting lost in Aladdin´s cave! Romy and I happily spent a couple of hours wandering around there. When we did get tired we rested our weary feet in an outside cafe in a cute square where there were Tango dancers entertaining the crowds. This was our first taste of Tango in BA. We spent the rest of our time doing typically tourist things like visiting the zoo, a Tango show, the Evita museum (great dresses) and shopping for tacky souvenirs! I was really sad to leave BA, the people and the place were lovely. I also felt a bit apprehensive because I knew that we were going to Rio next and I had built it up in my mind to be a scarier destination.

Well, Rio, where we are as I write this is a lot different to BA. We got here on Saturday in time for Carnaval celebrations which run until today, Ash Wednesday. Not only did we have to get used to another language (we´d only started to get the hang of Spanish) but we also had to contend with the horrible humidity. It was plain to see that Carnaval was in full swing even before we had left the airport, EVERYBODY seemed to be in Rio for Carnaval! We were hit with our first taste of a street or block party as soon as we arrived as there was one happening right outside our hostel. I enjoyed the samba music and we had an impromptu dance in the kitchen while making our dinner. The real Carnaval atmosphere was taking place on Sunday and Monday night in a stadium called the Sambodromo. Romy and I got tickets for the Sunday night and headed out there along with what felt like the rest of the population of Brazil. It was great traveling on the metro as we got to see a sneak preview of some of the costumes, everybody was in high spirits and ready to party! When we got there we found out that we were in the end section of the stadium but we still had a good view of the main thoroughfare where all the floats and people would be passing through. Basically each night lots of different Samba schools compete by putting on a 1 hour parade each. It starts at 9 o´clock at night and goes on until about 5 or 6 in the morning. The music was brilliant but was kind of secondary to the costumes and the floats. They were out of this world and so much more creative than I thought they would be. It was hard to pick the best one but I really enjoyed the French themed parade which included a Moulin Rouge float complete with windmill and can-can dancers. I took lots of movies with my camera to try and capture it all. We didn´t manage to stay until 6 in the morning but we did watch half of it and fell into bed in the early hours - we were all Samba-ed out!

Rio didn´t stop impressing us there though as the next day we visited Christo Redentor (better known as the huge Jesus monument on the hill!). There were some awesome views up there and the monument was WOW! We´ve also been to Copacobana and Ipenema beaches - a bit like the Costa del Sol but in South America! It was not exactly what I would describe as idyllic but definately an experience. Everything here is so in your face, it´s not quite as crazy as India but certainly just as lively. I think that both India and Rio would be well described as vibrant and alive. So, South America has been a good adventure so far and I´ll be joining my GAP adventures group tonight for my Southern Cross tour- 2 weeks in Brazil, 2 in Bolivia and 2 in Peru. Time to get packing my bag again!!