Sherwood Forest and Edwinstowe

Last month I went to Sherwood Forest. It seems like an obvious place to visit when you live in Nottingham, and as it's my third year here, I thought it was about time that I went!

I've always really liked the story of Robin Hood, especially the BBC TV series and the Disney film with the animals! I even played Maid Marian in the musical version my school did. So it was very cool to see the place where the story took place.

To get to Sherwood Forest, you have to take the bus from Victoria bus station in Nottingham city centre. The journey takes an hour, and is quite twisty and turny - not ideal when you get motion sickness like I do! But on the plus side, it was only £6.50 for a return ticket.

The bus arrives at a visitor centre, where there is a café and shop, as well as some Robin Hood themed decoration.

The forest itself is only a few minutes' walk away.

There are some fun decorations on the trees!

It doesn't take long to reach the main attraction in the forest, the major oak. It is said that Robin Hood and his Merry Men used to hide inside it. However, this is unlikely to be true, because apparently the tree had not yet been planted at the time! But it is still an impressive tree to see.

After looking around the forest, I went to the nearest village, Edwinstowe. It's well known for being the place where Robin Hood and Maid Marian supposedly got married.

There is a very nice statue of them in the centre of the village.

It was really interesting to visit such a historical place, and I'm very glad I finally went.

I don't know when I'll next be posting on this blog, as I don't really have any plans right now other than getting through the last semester of my degree. But hopefully I'll have the chance to do some more travelling soon after graduation!

Wollaton Park

Maybe this place doesn't really count as a "travel adventure" as it's within walking distance of where I live! But over the last couple of weeks, it was the autumn exam period at university, and there weren't any classes. I only had two exams, so I decided to use some of my spare time to explore some of the touristic areas of Nottinghamshire. I'm in my final year now and had never really got round to it before. But as I don't plan on staying here after graduation, it seemed like a good idea to do it now!

The first place I went to was Wollaton Park, the grounds of Wollaton Hall. It's a huge place, with lots of things to see.

Close to the parkside entrance is a large lake. There were lots of ducks, Canadian geese and Egyptian geese hanging out there! I'd like to go back and walk all the way around it at some point.

Then I walked up towards Wollaton Hall. It is really impressive in real life - more like a castle than a stately home. I think I mentioned before on one of my blogs that I have a slight obsession with castles and palaces, so I was excited to see it and take photos!

Next to it is another building, which is almost as impressive!

Inside that building is the Nottingham Industrial Museum (which I might visit in the future), a gift shop and a couple of cafés. There is a really good selection of cakes in the café I went to - I tried the lemon and earl grey one!

After that I went inside Wollaton Hall to visit the Natural History Museum. There is a very large taxidermy collection there, which I found strange but quite fascinating. There were lions, giraffes and leopards among many other creatures. I was interested to see that there was a Humboldt penguin and a Chilean flamingo, which both reminded me of my recent travel adventures in Chile!

There is also a part of the museum which has been preserved to show how the house was in the past, which I enjoyed looking around.

Before going home, I explored a bit more of the grounds of the house.

I had a really nice time exploring Wollaton Park, and it was a good way to escape from university life. It feels like a completely different place to the city of Nottingham. I will definitely go back at least once, given that it's so close.

A week later I travelled further afield in Nottinghamshire, to Sherwood Forest! That was another fun trip, and I'll be writing about it soon. 😊

Laguna Cejar, Ojos del Salar and Laguna Tebinquinche

The third and final tour we did in Atacama was to Laguna Cejar, and as I mentioned in my last post, it really did turn out to be the highlight of the trip.

There are two lagoons in the Laguna Cejar park: Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra. Laguna Cejar is just for looking at and taking pictures.

However, Laguna Piedra is for swimming - or rather floating! The high concentration of salt in the water means that it's hard to swim normally and really easy to float. It was an incredible experience and so much fun. It was definitely one of the best moments of my life, and I often wish I was back there!

Afterwards we went to two more lagoons called Ojos del Salar (eyes of the salt flat). Here we had the opportunity to take some fun perspective photos!

Like Laguna Cejar and Laguna Piedra, one of the lagoons was just for taking photos.

But we could swim in the other one. It was very cold and muddy, but fun!

After that, we went to a lagoon on the salt flats. I didn't know the name of it at the time, but a bit of research tells me it was Laguna Tebinquinche. It was quite similar to Laguna Chaxa, and I did spot a few more flamingos in the distance!

At Laguna Tebinquinche, we watched the sunset and had Pisco Sours! It was the perfect end to an amazing day.

I'm really glad that we went to the Atacama desert. We were deciding between Atacama and Torres del Paine, but as I'd been to the south of Chile during my Year Abroad, I wanted to go to the north this time. 

I'd actually reserved my place on two tours to the north of Chile, one to Atacama and one to La Serena, when I was living in Santiago. However, the travel company was extremely inefficient, and I was never able to finish booking those trips. There was also another occasion when I was going to go to La Serena which ended up not happening. So it was great to finally see northern Chile! As a side note on the subject of tour companies, I went to the Maule region and Mendoza, Argentina with Chile Extreme and to Huilo Huilo with Emotion Tour Chile, and I would highly recommend both.

Atacama was like a different country to Santiago, both in terms of scenery and culture. It felt much more like "typical" South America than the other places I'd been to in Chile and Argentina. My boyfriend said that even the language there is very different, and much more similar to Bolivian Spanish than to the Spanish spoken in Santiago.

It was an incredible week and a half in Chile, and it was great to visit so many fantastic places, see amazing wildlife, and of course spend time with my boyfriend. Atacama was the first time either of us had been on a "couple's holiday" and we really enjoyed it. We want to go away together again when possible, perhaps to Torres del Paine or maybe in Europe! We both quite like the idea of doing a road trip all the way down through Chile from Santiago, or taking the Eurostar from London to Paris...

For now, we have to complete our degrees! There are no real opportunities for taking big trips away at the moment, but I've decided to see some more of the area around Nottingham while I'm still living here. Yesterday I visited Wollaton Hall for the first time, which was really nice. There'll be a blog post about it coming soon!

Salar de Atacama, the Altiplano and Other Exciting Places!

On our second day in Atacama, we got up early to go on a tour at 7am to Salar de Atacama, the salt flats of the desert, along with some other places of interest. One thing I want to mention that is a bit strange about the area is that it's really hot during the day, and very cold and windy at night and in the early morning. It's also quite cold on the Altiplano. We only took hand luggage with us, so I was struggling at times to decide which items out of the small amount of clothes I'd brought would be best for the climate! (This gave me a good opportunity to buy a new skort from one of the shops selling colourful clothing in San Pedro on our last day. 😄 ) So at times, during the Salar de Atacama tour (and during the trip as a whole), I was feeling quite cold, and at other times quite hot. If I go back, I will be better prepared!

The first place we went to on the tour was a very charming village called Toconao.

It is most famous for its bell tower, which is separate from the church.

It is also famous for the two big cacti in the village square, known as Señor and Señorita Cactus. I won't say why they have those names, but it's quite obvious! 😂

Then we headed off to the salt flats, specifically Laguna Chaxa. This was a beautiful place, and very different to anywhere I'd been before. But there was another reason why I liked it so much... The lagoon is the habitat of three types of flamingo, which we were able to see fairly closely!

I'm a big animal lover, so I was really happy to have seen the birds in such an amazing setting. The only downside to the salt flats is that they don't smell very nice!

The next place we went was a town called Socaire, which is known for its ancient agricultural terraces as well as its Catholic church, demonstrating the history of the area. It reminded me a little bit of Machu Picchu, somewhere I'd like to go in the future.

Next we made a quick stop by a river which is interesting because it flows upwards and it's unclear why it does so. Maybe it's magic...

Shortly after that, we arrived in the Altiplano! We visited two lagoons that lie next to each other, Laguna Miñiques and Laguna Miscanti. They were an amazing sight, with the Andes mountains and the Miñiques volcano in the background.

But it gets better! We spotted some creatures moving about in the distance, which turned out to be vicuñas, animals that are similar to llamas and alpacas! When I went to Huilo Huilo in June, I had hoped to see guanacos, another similar type of animal, but there weren't any in sight. So I was really pleased to be luckier with my wildlife spotting this time.

(In the following picture, there are two vicuñas on the right which are extremely tiny as they were so far away.)

Then as we were driving to the next stop on the tour, we came across a group of them who were much closer! I was able to take a couple of photos through the minibus window.

The next stop on the tour was really interesting, as it was part of the desert where you can find both a marker along the Inca trail, as well as a marker of the Tropic of Capricorn.

                                                 

The tour was amazing; the places we visited were beautiful and I was so happy to see both flamingos and vicuñas! The salt flats, lagoons and Altiplano were so different to Valle de la Luna. I really liked both tours, but I found the places we saw on this one just a bit more scenic and impressive.

We got back to San Pedro at two o'clock in the afternoon, and had just a couple of hours before our next tour, which turned out to be the highlight of the entire trip!