Claire and Kev

New Zealand, well this was a bit of surprise as we had not planned on visiting NZ at all but due to having to do a visa run we decided to go for two weeks. We flew into Christchurch, spent a couple of day in the city, then flew to windy Wellington to spend a long weekend with Lesley and Steve, then back to Christchurch for a week of driving around the south island. Highlights: Christchurch a nice quiet city; the SO hotel; staying with Lesley and Steve, walks along the beach; the Weta workshop where lord of the rings special effects were worked on; Wellighton somewhat wet and windy but a nice city to be in for a few days. South Island, driving from Christchurch to Queenstown; snowboarding for a day in Queenstown. Fergburger; Fishbone ... read more

Our last stop in South America and what a stop, as we had three days before we went to Australia we decided that a nice 5 star hotel would be the best place to stay, to give us time to relax and repack before the long flight to Sydney. We booked the Radisson Plaza Santiago Hotel. It was as you can see from the pictures a very nice hotel. You were thanked for saying thank you when you entered the hotel. So bacially for 3 days we spent most of the time in the hotel, getting ourselves back to normal after all the buses, and of course packing our bag and dumping what we didnt need. Next stop Sydney!! ... read more

Ahh Bariloche, after our mammoth journey to get to this point, we were enjoying being back in Argentina. We booked into the Marco Polo hostel, a excellent place to stay which also has free dinner as well as breakie. This hostel was also one of the warmest we stayed in out the trip, very cosy. We had a great nights sleep the first night, probably down to all the bus travelling we had been doing. Bariloche is part of the lake district of Argentina, it also has skiing, snowboarding and other winter sports. The town is very much like the Austrian or Swiss towns in the Alps with some beautiful scenery. We had hoped to get down to Patagonia but as we had only a week left before we headed to Oz and it been the ... read more

After the week in Cuzco and Machu Picchu we decided to head west and stop in a place that was recommended to us. A small desert oasis outside the town of Ica called Huacachina. After the overnight bus where again we were asked to play bingo, we arrived in the morning in Ica, after a short taxi journey we arrived in Huacachina and quickly got accommodation. This place was amazing, very small town, pop 115 surrounds by sand dunes, hotel we got had a pool, bar and some very friendly parrots. We spent 3 night staying here in the most part chilling out, although we did take a day trip to what is known as the poor mans Galapagos. This consists of a boat trip to a island with 1000s of birds and some very early ... read more

After a relatively short bus journey which also involved the bus having to take barge across a lake, we arrived in Copacabana on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. With the help and recommendation of Osgur we had booked into a place called Las Olas, what a place to stay for a couple of days, as you can see from the pictures we had our own suite in what they still call a hostel, it was not exactly budget accommodation but we thought it was worth every penny. We had a huge bed with unbelievable views of the lake providing some amazing sunsets. Outside there is hammocks and nice gardens, as you can see in the picture Kev's beard was also coming along well. We spent ... read more