Rolo on Tour

In a basketball game the last quarter of a game is often referred to as ‚Crunchtime‘. For me the last 3 month of my 1year-trip started when I set foot on New Zealand (or Aotearoa as the Maori call it). So we can say that the Crunchtime of my travels has just started and the last energy is needed to finish the trip in a good way. Lets see if I am a crunchtime player!

Arriving in Auckland I entered a different world from what I have experienced the 9 months before. And something felt especially weird when I was walking in the city. After one day I realized that the problem were the cars which were driving on the ‚wrong‘ side of the road. As that fact can just not enter my brain I kind of look everywhere now every time I cross a street. Always it’s a relief to reach the other side :-).

Auckland and its landmark, the Sky Tower

Of course there are lots of other differences. First of all the people coming to travel here are different from the people I met before. Especially the following groups have a lot of members here:
Asians who never speak a word, 20 year old Germans who talk all the time about how good they were at school and spoiled british guys happy that the party buses organize everything for them and that they can sit next to each other on them ;-).

A pretty nice thing about New Zealand is that it is such a green country. Of course the reason for that has to be taken into account as well: It rains a lot…

Everywhere you look, it’s green

Also the bus rides here are quite different. First of all the bus takes so many breaks, it is unbelievable. 25% of all travel time is needed just for the coffee/breakfast/2nd breakfast/lunch… breaks of the driver.
Being well fed maybe that is why they have still so much energy left that they are all trying to be entertainers. One for example started a snowball fight on a break 😉

A good place to throw some snowballs at your passengers

So let me tell you a bit about my travels on the North Island. From Auckland I went to a small place called Waitomo, which has many caves nearby. On the way I could see an eel beeing feeded, but of course the highlight was to come later.

No, the finger is not part of the food

And that highlight consists of the many glowworms who live in these caves. Once all the lights are out they produce a quite amazing sight:

I want them on the ceiling of my bedroom!

Afterwards I got to know a place called Rotorua which has a smell of sulfur all around caused by the geothermal activity in that area. I wonder if that causes thirst:

„Let’s all meet up at the lake for a drink or two“

Next was the capital of New Zealand: Wellington. There I spent a whole day in their national museum ‚Te Papa‘. It  has many interesting things to offer and it was free – a rare thing in New Zealand. Also I could visit their national parlament and have a quick insight in how their democracy works just before catching the ferry to the South Island.

Arriving on the South Island just in time for the sunset

Welcome to the South!

I wondered what might expect me on the days to come.

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That title was of course not my idea. I have read that line now already a couple of times from other travellers who spent their last days of their South America trip in Buenos Aires. (It is a common place to fly out.)
I hope you don´t mind if I join them and use it one more time 🙂

And indeed, after spending some time with my girlfriend

quite a sleepy couple

I reached Buenos Aires, the last leg of my travels in South America.

Buenos Aires is the stage for many street artists. Some impressions:

Living the dream of being invisible

Puppet theater in the streets

What else does this city have to offer? Well, for people fond of egyptian architecture there is something:

El obelisco

And of course it is the worldwide capital of Tango. It unfortunately turned into a big tourism spectacle making it hard to experience the real thing. You can even take pictures with Tango dancers in the street for 6 dollars. Not bad for 2 minutes of work!

I guess they earn a lot more than the people who actually dance in the streets like the following couple:

Do you feel the passion?

Another area on the list of every B.A. visitor is the neighborhood La Boca. There you will find a small street called Caminito with pretty colorful houses.

Why so much blue and yellow? Because these are the colors of the local football club, the Boca Juniors!

Speaking of football, yes that is of course a big thing in the country of Diego Maradona. And while I was there the Copa America went into its crucial phase. Sadly for them the Gauchos went out pretty early, but there were enough immigrants to cheer their teams on – watching the games for example on the big screen:

120 minutes and 4 penalty attempts, but still no goal for Brazil!

The first Semifinal I actually got to watch at the airport, because it was my turn to say goodbye to the South American Continent.
And as nobody stopped me like in a Hollywood movie I indeed got on that plane to New Zealand 🙁

Let’s take a quick look back. I have spent half a year in South America and a lot has happened:

I have been to 7 countries, namely Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

I was trekking within beautiful areas in Ecuador, Peru and in Chile.
I have been to the Amazon jungle.
I saw the incredible salt flat in Uyuni.
I was walking on the equator.
I went down the world´s most dangerous road on a mountainbike.
I climbed a mountain of 6088 metres of altitude.
For the first time in my life I went skydiving.
I visited the impressive ruins of Machu Picchu.

And these are just some of the things I will remember of the time here and which makes it very hard to leave.
But I do not say Goodbye. I say „See you later“.
Ciao amigos, nos vemos prontito!

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Returning from Rio it was very soon clear that I will not see this type of weather again for a very long time.
The first spot where I had to bear the cold and rain again was Posadas, the capital of a province called Misiones in the Northeast of Argentina. It gets its name of the jesuite missionaries who have been around in that area.
My mission was not convincing anybody to join any religion, but to visit fellow traveller Julio.
A good argentinian host as he was, we of course had a nice asado(barbecue). I gotta say that culinary speaking having a nice piece of argentinian meat is just paradise.
Of the other 2 argentinian specialties, Dulce de Leche and Mate Tea, though I am not really fond of. The latter I just take for the camera:

Hmmm, Mate

That guy crosses too many borders. We should keep an eye on him!

Leaving that place (in the most luxury bus ever, they even offered champagne!) I could soon mark off another country on the list. But this country was not Paraguay, that would have been too easy (You can see it in the background of the last picture ;-)). Instead the next destination was Uruguay, easily accessible crossing the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires.

The problem was that I was catching the coldest time of the year there, which makes it hard to enjoy. The country itself is supposed to have very beautiful beaches for example, but what help is that to me in winter?
In general that is a thing which you can avoid with good planning of your trip. You check clima diagrams and so on and you may end up having a plan which enables you to leave your umbrella at home. But then plans can always change, so you might as well save those planning hours and just hope for the best 😉

A highlight the capital, Montevideo, has to offer is the stadium where the very first soccer world cup in 1930 was hosted. They created a soccer museum around it with exposures of some cups, fotographs and newspaper articles regarding all the big soccer events since then.
So If I am not mistaken I have to congratulate the Celestes (as they are called by their supporters) to winning 2 World Cups more than the Netherlands.

The crowd goes crazy

By the way don´t get confused by my outfit as I am wearing just a shirt only for the picture. In reality I also needed a sweater and a rain jacket.

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