Cartagena, Colombia

The second day we were in Cartagena, we took a bus to a mud volcano. When we got to the mud volcano, we climbed up some stairs to get to the mud. When I first got in I thought I could swim but when I tried to, I stayed in one spot.

Can you find me in all that mud?

We rubbed mud all over ourselves, even our faces. The mud was slimy and we could not touch the bottom. I tried to push myself down using my dad but I just popped back up.

I got mud everywhere!

 After, we climbed down all muddy and walked to a lake to get washed off.

The next day we went to a park that had sloths. I found a big lump in the tree but it was actually a sloth. We looked closer and we saw a mommy sloth, a daddy sloth and a baby sloth.

Look way up!

Here you can see the daddy sloth hanging down and the baby sloth reaching for him. 

One day in Cartagena, we met the Baird family. They were a family with 1 mom,1 dad and 2 girls. They were from London, Ontario.

It was fun hanging out with some other kids from Canada!

It was really fun playing with them at the beach. One time we were walking around and our parents were watching some dancing. We found a man selling bubbles. He was spraying them and we ran through popping the bubbles. He looked like he didn't like his job.

I am going to miss our new friends!

Cartagena was great because we went to the mud volcano, saw sloths and met the Bairds.

San Gil, Colombia

The first day in San Gil, we went mountain biking. When we went biking I had a really big bike.

We mostly went up hill which was very exhausting. Then we went down hill. At one point we went past a goat.

We had a break next to the goat. It was bleating at us. He was pretty loud. Near the end, we saw a baby cow with big ears. The biking was hard work but a lot of fun.

Mountain biking was a lot of work!

After biking we went rafting on the Rio Tonce. It was really cold and fun. It was better than Pucón, Chile because Rio Tonce had bigger waves. One wave was so ginormous that it filled the whole boat with water!

It was fun to go rafting again! 

The next day we went rappelling. It was really fun.

The first challenge was jumping off a 5 meter platform into a pool of water. It was scary, but I did it!

After that we walked on a single line bridge. When my parents were crossing, our guide shook the wires to try to make my parents fall. But they didn't!

Then we went rappelling. Have you ever been rappelling? We went rappelling on a small wall.

Me and my dad got to reppel at the same time!

It was a long way down! 

The next thing we did was a big rappel next to a waterfall!


Later that day, we went ziplining and went on a big swing. The big swing was my favourite because they pull you high in the air with a wire, and when they let you go it feels like a ginormous under ducky!

First they pulled me way up!

Then they let me gooooo!

Puerto Iguazu

Our first day, we went to the Iguazu water falls on the Argentinian side.

Look at all that water!

We walked on a lot of boardwalks to see the water falls. We wanted to go on a boat into the "Devils Throat" but me and Charlie were too young.

There were lots of boardwalks! 

The next day we went to the Brazilian side and there, we got to go on a boat. We went right under some of the water falls and got soaked!

This is us after we went through the waterfalls!

By Iguazu Falls there were coatis. They look like ant eaters because they have long noses and also looked like raccoons because they have similar tails. They were pests because they can hurt humans.

Me and a coati! 

We also saw monkeys. I don't know what kind they were, but they were cute. They can be dangerous too, because they can bite. We mostly saw the monkeys in the trees.

In our Airbnb, there were ants!! They were tiny ants and were marching in lines. We would wash them away, but soon they would be back for their revenge! Then we would wash them away again! I guess that is what it is like in a tropical place.

My favourite food at Puerto Iguazu was the ice cream at Cremolatti. My favourite flavours were pineapple and strawberry cream.

Inside Cremolatti (they make great ice cream!

In other restaurants, there were lots of olives. We ate lots of green olives.

There were lots of restaurants that served olives and meat and cheese! Yum!

The Workaway with the Aussie’s in Uruguay

We stayed at a Workaway that a family of five kids owned. It was in the countryside of Uruguay. Joey was 11, Mickey was 10, Noah was 9, Eva was 4 and Charlie was 3. Kym and Matt were the parents. They moved there from Australia.

One day, they got chickens! They got the chickens at a factory farm where they were kept in small cages, now they are free range. I think that they are happier here.

We made some lay boxes for the chickens, and they loved them so much!

They also had ponies and horses on their property. Maybe one day they will get cows too!

This is a picture of  me, Mickey and Charlie with the horses.

They have two pools. One was small and one was big. You could swim in the small pool, but the big pool was dirty and mostly empty. In the water that was left, lived lots of frogs and toads! All of the kids, including me, tried to catch the frogs. There was one that was a lot bigger than the others. We named him “Big George”.

Here is a picture of us with of favourite frogs that we caught.

We made a water slide for the frogs! 

Me, Charlie (by brother), Noah and Mickey made a club called “The Horse’s Meow (And Barks Too)”. In our club, we made big meals for the chickens and fed the horses. We also made a secret clubhouse, but I can’t tell you about it because it is secret.

It was very fun here and I wish I could have stayed longer. We made some really great friends and I can’t wait until they come visit us in Canada.

Bariloche, Argentina

We took a very loooong bus ride from Mal del Plata to Bariloche, Argentina. Can you guess how long the bus ride was?

In Bariloche, we found a big cement slide that was like a water slide because it was about the same width as a water slide, but it was way longer. We took the chair lift up to the top of the slide. To go down,we had to sit on plastic sleds with wheels. There was a lever on the plastic sled. If you pushed it forward, you would go. If you pulled it, you would stop. There were two slides so I raced Charlie. The slides were fast! It was really fun!

This is a picture that I found on Inspirock.com

Another day, we went to Bahia Lopez, a rocky beach next to some beautiful mountains. The water was freezing, so instead of going swimming, I built a village of mouse houses with Charlie. We used rocks and sticks. The buildings that were in the village were;

• a gym
• condos
• a hospital
• an outdoor school
• a police station with a jail
• a bank
• a town hall
• a climbing wall
• a theatre
• a grocery store

After we finished our village, we took pictures of the village, then we destroyed it!! We separated the rocks from the wood and we made HUGE mouse houses!!! Charlie made one and l made another.

In my house, it was really dark and it had two little dark bedrooms. At the back of the house, I built a shed with a pizza oven in it, and it was connected to the house.

The is the pizza oven I built on the back of the mouse house because pizza is so good!

Also, there was a front patio with a ramp and a pool beside it so they could jump in the pool off the patio. There was also a climbing wall on the side of the house.

Here is the climbing wall!

Do you think any mice will live there?

The last day in Bariloche, we went kayaking with a man named Diego.

Getting everything ready before we get into the kayaks.

He brought his kids along and that made it more fun!

Me and Téo had water fights with some water pumps! 

Teo was 8 and Sol was 10. We paddled to a beach and we played Frisbee and played in the water. The water was so clear, you could see the bottom. It was fun!

Going for a swim in the super clear water! 

The Cruise

In January, my oma and my grandma and grandpa came to visit me. We took a cruise on the Norwegian Sun from San Antonio, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

Me and Charlie in front of the Norwegian Sun.

One of the places for food was the Garden Cafe. The Garden Cafe is a buffet with lots of choices. My favourite foods in the morning were sausage, cantaloupe, watermelon, and waffles. And in the afternoon my favourite foods at lunch were salad and meatballs and ice cream. Next to the Garden Cafe was a pizza bar so I ate pizza at lunch. Gary is the person who does ‘washy washy happy happy’. ‘Washy washy happy happy’ is what he says when he squirts hand sanitizer on your hands when you come into the Garden Cafe. He also sings while the guitar player (l don't know his name) played his guitar to welcome everybody. 

My Oma with Washy-Washy Gary.

It's a good thing that the Garden Cafe was close to our room and the pool, but we were not able to wear wet bathing suits in the Garden Cafe.

Another place to eat was the Four Seasons. The Four Seasons was a fancy place to eat dinner. It was so fancy that they put our napkins on our laps and we couldn't wear our hats. We always had the same waiter, his name was Vishall. Vishall was a nice waiter. He was also really smart, every night we asked him a different question and he would answer it. 

Vishall our waiter was so nice!

After we ordered, he would bring us other things from the menu so we would try new foods. He knew us so well, he brought me and Charlie chocolate milk before we ordered it because he knew we liked it! My favourite food at the Four Seasons was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were amazing!

We also ate at a restaurant called the Seven Seas. We went there because I was missing some of my favourite foods from home: baked beans with maple syrup and tuna melts. We went
to the front desk so we could give a message to the head chef with a suggestion to include them on his menu. But when we went to the front desk, the attendant called Chef Ariel to come see us and we got to tell him in person. He wrote down my ideas and my room number and told me that he would have them ready at the Seven Seas; baked beans and maple syrup for breakfast and tuna melts for lunch. 

Thank you for the baked beans with maple syrup Chef Ariel! 

They weren’t exactly the same as home but they were nice. The Seven Seas was even fancier than the Four Seasons, but our waiters couldn’t answer our questions the way Vishall could.

Splash academy was a fun place that is "parent free" - that means kids only! We played games, like dodgeball and tag, and made crafts and played video games. We also had theme nights. My favourite was "mission impossible" because we pretended to be spies and climbed through lasers and looked for hidden objects.

Sometimes we got off the ship. My favourite time l got off the ship was when I went to the Falkland Islands and we went to see penguins. There were 3 kinds of penguins: Gentoo, Magellanic and King penguins. My favourite penguin was a Magellanic because he was sitting inside his burrow and poking his head out looking happy, so l named him "Happy". 

Happy the Magallanic Penguin! 

I also liked the King penguins because I saw them marching to and from the water.

If you were quiet and sat still, the King Penguins would walk right by!

We had a room steward. His name was I Made. Every night before we went back to our room, he made us a towel animal. One night we came back and we saw him in our room making a towel animal so he showed us how to make one! My favourite towel animal was a bull.

The Bull!

The cruise was a lot of fun, but the best part was seeing my grandparents. I missed them so much!

Can you see the glacier hiding in the mountains behind my grandma?  

My grandpa was excited about the exercise equipment in the streets in South America!  

My Oma came on some fun hikes with us!