end of NZ and beginning of south americaaa

Hello hello hello hello!
As usual I've been woefully unimpressive in my attempts to keep you up to date with my movements around the world,I've been informed by different members of the family to keep my posts less lengthy and more frequent-I've clearly ignored this request rather spectacularly,apologies...
So i´m writing to you now from Buenos Aires in Argentina which is a world away from sleepy New Zealand where i left you last,so i´ll fill you in. From Timaru we drove the old banger up to Christchurch,the biggest city on South Island and very very english.
The next morning I took the bus from Christchurch to go meet cousins,Thomas and Tamsin and the girls in a sleepy little town called Fairlie in the country 2 or 3 hours away close to Lake Tekapo. I was met at the bus by the gaggle of William-Pawlett´s all a fluster with the always awkward arrangements of the children´s birthday party,and as usual I was surprised by how much the girls are growing up-Harriet especially,mainly due to the key fact she now both looks AND talks to me which I had practically given up hope of...The weather around Lake Tekapo was absolutely beautiful and we had a lovely few hours lazing around the shores of the lake,got to see the famous sheepdog monument there in honour of the work all the sheepdogs have done over the years for New Zealand agriculture. After a little drive we had a welcome hot drink at the observatory perched in typical New Zealand fashion on top of a hill that seemed to have no right to be there at all. Surrounding the observatory on all sides was almost a wall of mountains with the rather surreal sight of the famous 'long white cloud' crawling it's way over the valleys and peaks like water,it's quite hard to do the event justice but it was pretty incredible...It was a pleasure to be treated to some homecooked food by Tamsin,the diet in a campervan is somewhat limited to a general plethora of tinned beans and soups.Another just as relaxing day followed as I did my best to repay Thomas and Tamsin's generosity by occupying the kids as much as i could and providing the usual service of human climbing frame. I got a tour of Thomas' school in Fairlie and it was unimaginably small but Fairlie as a town is quite a quirky little place as well i suppose,nestled in the shadow of undulating mountains that brought back memories of many a lake district holiday. Would've liked to get to Mount Cook but Thomas was feeling a little under the weather,and it was just such a nice day that lolling around in the sun at a farm restaurant with attractive schoolgirls serving gourmet pies seemed not a bad option at all...I think Fairlie probably provided the most effective detox and rehab from the temptations of the city that you could imagine and so useful having close family in New Zealand.And so after a lazy morning and send off from Tamsin and Harriet I headed back to Christchurch for Jack's birthday. We went to a really nice restaurant in the centre of town where you could cook your own scallops and fillet steak on a hot stone plate in front of you,although probably a foolish financial decision it was definitely worth it and probably came more under the bracket of 'flashpacking' rather than backpacking...
As the others left for Auckland due to a slightly earlier flight I had a day wondering around on my own in Christchurch and successfully saw every possible cultural thing there within the space of an hour,the cities there really don't have too much to them,especially in comparison to some of the South American cities..

Met Rich who had been down in Dunedin with some of his family in the evening and we were kindly allowed to stay in his godfather's house in the suburbs of Christchurch on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The Storey's had some envious sporting pedigree,one of the sons rows for New Zealand,the other son plays hockey for new zealand and the daughter,Jenny rows for Junior New Zealand,made me feel ever so slightly inadequate!(I blame the parents...)Jenny and the parents were lovely though,if not slightly mad and it's always nice to have free accommodation once in a while!We ended up spending another day at the Storeys having a nice walk along the beach just outside the house and being educated in the complete other world that is the life of a New Zealand teenager from Jenny. We finally escaped the homely surroundings and embarked on an epic road trip spanning both islands back to Auckland on north Island,me and Rich made a stop at Hamner springs and lazed around for a good few hours in 40 degree natural sulphur heated pools,which had an impressively disgusting aroma...Me and Rich then subsequently spent the next few hours awkwardly trying to retain some sort of manly pride by drinking beer and eating burgers to try and counteract the effeminate fact that yes.we had gone to a spa together.
After a pretty rank sleep in the car park at the ferry port we got a 6 o'clock ferry to north island and made some more boring progress up North Island.We stopped off in Taupo to further confirm our manliness by watching two super 14 rugby games back to back. We finally arrived in Auckland the next day for a quick change and then off to our third and last rugby game against local rivals Waikato Chiefs,again not a full crowd,for a country where rugby is their national game the turnouts are rubbish. After a strictly uncultural night me and Rich began a bit of a sit-in in our hostel in Auckland for 3 or 4 days before our flight to south america.This consisted of much sleeping,films and chats with mostly dull public schoolgirls...Then after an incredible 5 or 6 weeks we finally got a flight out of rainy New Zealand to Santiago in Chile.I think i can safely say that Fiji and NZ were a bit of a holiday and South America signalled the beginning of travelling.
It was so refreshing to get to a country where they spoke a foreign language,neither mine nor Rich's spanish is particularly fluent or in real truth,existent at all...However Rich being basically fluent in French means he can communicate in some sort of Franco-Spanish ramble. I however have resorted mostly to the old standby of grinning like a loon,shouting random Argentinian footballer's names and pointing,the general result of this pantomine is poor Roberto,Miguel or Eva thinking i've asked for a guinea pig when all i want is some water-but hey ho it's all fun and games in the end...
So yes,back to Santiago,it consisted of a-lot of sleeping,we crossed the international date line on the flight from NZ to S.America which basically makes me unable to function apparently.Although going to bed for 19 hours is fun I couldn't help but think i was missing out on some sights. But we did have a good explore of Santiago,absolutely stacked with street stalls and just generally a phenomenal amount of people.We walked around for hours which was nice just to be able to experience a different culture,although South Americans have an unnerving of habit of staring,probably because we're the only two teenagers in the whole continent with blonde hair...Took in a bit of culture to keep my old mother happy,a few abominable churches with some terrifically tacky scenes..From Santiago we took a funny little minibus with a selection of Chileans over the border to Mendoza in Argentina through the Andes. It was a pretty amazing car journey,new snow had just fallen on the massive mountain passes which we drove through and it was stunning.After a short stop at the mountain top border crossing with lots of shivering (there's no danger of us getting a tan here i fear..)and hoping no one on the bus was trying to smuggle a substantial amount of cocaine across the border we made it to Mendoza.
The uncomfortable perch of a campervan bed has now been replaced by the dulcit tones of snoring germans in bunk beds,i'm not sure which atmosphere i prefer but jolly entertaining either away. Mendoza was a lovely city,it was the 200th anniversary of something patriotic and important so the main plaza where everyone gathered during the day had live music and huge crowds which generated a nice carnival atmosphere..We met up with Alex,Jack and Suze who seemed rather more shocked by the language and culture change from New Zealand,convinced that a mugging was only just round the corner but everyone here's really friendly and doesn't seem threatening at all-perhaps i'm a little too laid back!Mendoza signalled the start of my search to find my greatest ever steak and proved pretty fruitless,probably due to a limited budget but I continued to get steak every night in my carniverous quest. Among the standard strolls and shopping in Mendoza over the next few days we went on a wine tour through the Argentinian countryside. The company was run by a fantastic old man called Mr Hugo,who's a perfect version of everyone's favourite,borderline alcoholic uncle.Between the 5 of us we hired two tandem bikes and a single which was awesome fun. In a homage to my two elder sibling's ridiculous buy of a tandem at home,we wobbled around the probably fairly dangerous argentinian roads sampling any number of olives,olive oils,chocolate,beer,absinthe and wines to the apparent joy of the argentinian public who honked their horns and chatted to us as we struggled to fight against our obvious lack of fitness.. This rather devastating diet was indulged in under a lovely argentinian sunshine and as the sun started to set the group of fairly sweaty teenagers wobbled back to Mr Hugo for some free wine and dodgy spanish conversation with much merriment. After a lovely few days we got a bus down to Cordoba which was nothing special,apart from a very odd exhibition at the museum of real human body parts displayed in rather too much detail which showed how the body systems worked etc,jolly interesting but pretty nauseous stuff!And from there we arrived here in Buenos Aires.
I'll fill you in soon on the events of Argentina's massive capital but I'm afraid the long queue of 10 travellers behind me waiting for the computer means i'll wrap this up as i fear being mobbed...
Lots of love to general friends and family from an unwashed Theo in desperate need of a haircut..
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