The last two weeks have been dominated by wine, wildlife and waves and also the opportunity to catch up with some old friends. The wine first - this came in the barossa valley. One of Australia's most famous wine areas the vineyards in the Barossa are close enough together to allow walking from one to another (crucial if you want to sample the wines) so we had a great day strolling along in the sun trying some of the fabulous Shiraz and even stopping off for a cheese platter and a game of croquet. We were also able to enjoy a [View Full Entry]

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G'day. We arrived in Australia about 2 weeks ago now and have been enjoying exploring the South West of Western Australia. We landed in Perth and went to stay with Andy's friends Andrew and Tracey, complete with 3 kids and a large dog. We had a brilliant time there, mainly relaxing, although we did venture to the beach on Australia day and Andy braved the 35+ degree heat for a round of golf. We also took a look around historic Freemantle. We can't believe their hospitality doesn't make it into the rough guide. Perhaps it will feature in the 2009 edition. [View Full Entry]

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Our 8 weeks in New Zealand have gone very fast and I'm writing this in Christchurch as we wait for our flight to Perth to begin the Australia leg of our trip. We have loved our time here, it is a fantastic country and we would definitely recommend it. The last two weeks have brought more glorious weather, superb views, encounters with wildlife and the occasional bit of hard exercise. We met friends Vicki and Alastair in Fjordland and had some great evenings (including one very late one) with them. We also managed to fit in a walk above Lake Manapouri [View Full Entry]

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Belated Happy New Year! Since our last blog, we've really understood why everyone raves about New Zealand, the sun has come out and stayed out and we have seen some stunning scenery. We've spent the past three weeks with my parents and have just delivered them to the airport (with just a few tears..) We kicked off our time together by going on a Devine wine tour (the company's pun) of the Marlborough wine region and enjoyed sampling lots of different wine, not just Savvy as it is known here, mainly from the smaller producers, gaving us some good ideas of [View Full Entry]

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After 5 months of fantastic weather in South America it was inevitable that we would eventually hit some rain and sure enough it has struck in New Zealand. In Roturua it rained, this place really stinks - of sulphur from the thermal action going on underneath it. Despite the rain we wandered around the mud pools and crater lakes and then headed out of town to find a natural thermal pool - we had it all to ourselves, it was very hot and absolutely free. For the Tongariro crossing it rained - this is billed as New Zealand's best day walk [View Full Entry]

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Back tracking slightly...... it feels like we left South America months ago! From El Chalten we had a few days of travelling to take us back over the border and into Chile for the last time. Our destination was Pucon, in the Chilean lakes. The town has two claims to fame - one being an immense, perfectly conical, active volcano towering over the town, and the second being a beautifully blue lake. The south american summer weather had arrived (just as we were leaving) and we spent several days relaxing, hired bikes and generally savouring the last few days of our [View Full Entry]

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For the last two weeks we have been in Southern Patagonia, arguably our favourite spot in South America and a glaciologists dream (Nick Rutter - you must come here). It was great to have friends Angela and Mark travelling with us for most of that time although a great shame that they were unwell for a lot of their holiday. We met them in Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego. It is a city that prides itself on being El fin del Mundo and it certainly had an end of the world feel to it. Its bleakness is its beauty - to [View Full Entry]

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Leaving the Lake District behind, we took another overnight bus to Trelew on the coast of northern patagonia. We got off the bus early in the morning, expecting to be find welsh speakers and dragon flags everywhere but it proved not to be the case. Nonetheless we did find some old welsh looking ladies (don´t ask me what welsh looking is!) where we had our mammoth welsh tea. We picked up a car and drove down to punta tombo, the biggest magellanic penguin colony in the world. We had great fun - the site is designed very well, you can walk [View Full Entry]

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When we wrote our last blog we were just about to get on a bus to Bariloche, 11 days later we are still there although this is not entirely by design (more on that later). Bariloche is our first stop in Patagonia, the tourist capital of the Argentinian Lake District and a great place to spend some time. We are here in the month between the ski season and the summer season which has both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side neither the town nor the walking trails have been over-run by tourists and the snow on the mountains gives [View Full Entry]

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Since our last blog, we have been having an unusually sedate time! We enjoyed our time in Villa General Belgrano and went along to the beer festival for an evening, once we thought our livers had recovered from Andy´s birthday. There wasn´t much to do in the area though - we even found ourselves playing tennis (a draw!) We moved on to the city of Mendoza, which was a pleasant city, with very good food and drink (we will never be proper backpackers!). We couldn´t stay too long as we had managed to coincide our arrival with the Columbus day national [View Full Entry]

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