Chile

The Pachamama tour group

We stayed in Santiago for almost a week where we took spanish classes and were staying in a lovely hostel called La Casa Roja. The city itself is unexciting but it was a good base to start our trip. We did spanish classes with a Peruvian called Jesus and partied in the evenings - not much else to do there.

From there we took a 5 day tour into northern Chile in a group of 15 people - english, scottish, kiwis, dutch, 2 swiss, 2 columbians, 1 brazilian and ourselves. We saw lots of penguins, sea lions, pelicans, pink flamingos, visited museums, national parks, drove 2 days through the Atacama desert, visited a train cemetary (?) and swam in an oasis in the middle of the desert - very cool.

(Sunset at Bahia Ingles)

(Valley of the Moon, San Pedro)

We are now in San Pedro de Atacama - here 2 days (nice little town, white low size buildings, dirt roads etc) and we (and 7 of the others in our original group) have decided to cross into Bolivia tomorrow morning.


The group is myself and sanch, a Scottish girl Rowan, a Dutch guy Stefan, a Swiss guy Casper, an English couple David and Elli and a Kiwi couple Gareth and Vic. The weather here is really hot, very dry too (being in the middle of the desert). Apparently though it will be colder in Bolivia so we are packing accordingly.

Sancha at the Salt Flats, Michelle in the Valley of the Moon

Where we are now: Uruguay. the Riviera!

IRL - Hong Kong - Thailand - Laos - Cambodia - Vietnam - Thailand - Malaysia - Singapore - Australia - New Zealand - Chile - Bolivia - Peru - Argentina - Uruguay - Argentina - Brazil - IRL

Next Stop - South America!

New Zealand - North Island

(view from our hostel in Wellington)

We took the car ferry from Picton (South Island) to Wellington (North Island) - a journey that took 3 and a half hours. Wellington is NZ's capital city with a population of just 205,000. That evening we partook of the "happy hour" specials (incl 75% rum) in the hostel bar and proceeded to the "slick bars on Courtenay Place" - Ya right, we ended up in (of all places) Kitty O Shea's till the early hours. The following afternoon we visited Te Papa museum (museum of NZ) which houses large Maori collections and histories of European settlements.

(Michelle in Napier with the biggest cup of coffee ever brewed!)
Travelling further north we visited Napier, a town of 55,000 at the sourthern end of Hawkes Bay. This town, flattened by an earthquake in the 1930's was rebuilt in Art Deco style. Apparently it could challenge Miami for the "Art Deco capital of the world".

Our next port of call was Rotorua - known to us as Sulphur city. It has bubbling mud pools, gurgling hot springs, geysers and the nasty smell of rotten eggs everywhere. There is a heavy concentration of Maori culture here and we partook of the "Tamaki Maori Village" experience which included traditional costumes, dance and of course the haka.














We were introduced to the "hongi" (Maori nose to nose greeting) and we had a feast after the show. The feast included chicken, beef, lamb, potatos, carrots, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, mint sauce, lots of salads and for desert - pavlova (the Kiwis and the Aussies argue who invented this!), fresh fruit salad, steamed pudding and custard. As it was an "all you can eat" affair we did and haven't had such a dinner since we've started travelling.

The following day we visited a place known to the Maori people as "Tikitere" which was renamed by George Bernard Shaw after his visit - Hells Gate. He said after seeing the place
"I wish I had never seen this place, it reminds me too vividly of the fate theologians have promised me".


Its a large area of land with volcanic pools, grey barren rocks, a constant stench of sulphur, a hot thermal waterfall (the only one in the southern hemisphere) and a lot of mud pools. We did the 2.5km walking tour with our guide Cairo followed by a 20 minute mud bath and spa. The mud is a silky smooth texture, grey in colour. A mud facial completed our morning pampering session.

From Rotorua, we continued north to Matamata to visit Hobbiton - the location used by Peter Jackson to film the hobbit village scenes for the LOTR movies. It was a complete tourist trap but was fun to do as we got our photos taken looking out of hobbit holes, saw the Party Tree and some photos of the filming in progress. The "movie set" is in the middle of a 1000 acre sheep farm and as lambing season started a month ago there was lots of little lambs running around the place - very cute.

From Matamata we made our way north past Auckland to a place called Whangarei where Sancha partook of a dive trip out at Poor Knights Islands - apparently one of the top 10 dive sites in the world and certainly gorgeous! From there, the whistle-stop tour of the north island in 10 days brought us further north again to the Aupouri peninsula where we gaped at the views and boarded on the dunes. We landed in Auckland on Wednesday the 6 Sept and are now in prep for the next leg!

(Michelle at the dunes on the west coast of the Aupouri peninsula)

(Sancha at Cape Reinga, the most northerly point in NZ)