Hi everyone, Greetings from Brisbane!. We arrived enthusiastically here early on the 14th June, a Sunday so everywhere seemed quiet and calm. We had booked our hostel before we left and were instructed to get off the airport train at Brunswick Street, unfortunately though the station was called Fortitude Valley and it took us a few train journeys to get to the right place, following that the hostel had given us their office address and we spent ages lugging our backpacks up and down an area called Spring Hill looking for the place. Eventually we arrived at Valley Verandas Hostel and [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, Well we finally arrived in Sydney on the 1st June, the first leg of our journey over and time to get back to reality and look for work before the money runs out. We didn't spend too much time deciding on a hostel for the first night and just selected the cheapest one from the notice board at the airport. We waited for our complimetary pick-up from the airport and got to the hostel in around a half an hour. We decided to go out and explore the area, Kings Cross that is, and realised we had left the [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, We arrived in Picton around 9.30pm on the 27th May and drove south to Bleinheim, a wine region in Marlborough. We drove around for a few hours looking for somewhere to park outside the town but with nothing but vineyards to be seen for miles we returned to the town and pulled in outside a small park. Time conscious and money poor, in the morning we made our decision to cut out visiting the north coast and Nelson and instead headed straight through the wine valleys and accross to the west coast. Marlborough is New Zealands premier wine producing [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, We arrived in Lake Toupo in the late afternoon, the scenic journey down was less than a couple of hours, and not surprisingly in almost winter the forest fire signs were all set to low. As soon as we arrived in Toupo, Diarmuid bought a fishing licence and quizzed the shop assistant on the best fishing spots. So with all the equipment and information needed off we went up the Waikato River for some dusk fishing. Parts of the river are only used for fly fishing but between the control bridge and Huka Falls you can fish with a [View Full Entry]

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Hi, Well we arrived in Rotorua in the evening of Friday 22nd May. As soon as we drove into the town a strong smell of sulphur hit us and it took a few minutes for us to figure out what it was until we saw all the steam rising from various cracks in the footpaths and other sulphur pools around the town. Tired we drove around for a long time looking for somewhere to camp for the night, but arriving by dark to a new place always proves difficult, we eventually found a spot by Lake Rotorua to camp for the [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everyone, Our apologies for the intended short but sheer long term abandonment of the blog... No excuses I'm afraid, one thing just led to another and the blog became a distant memory. We promise to keep it updated for the forseeable future!. New Zealand was all it is made out to be and more. We didn't give the country justice though by spending only a mere 2 weeks there, the North Island alone deserves at least 3 and the south, a lifetime!. Arriving at Auckland airport at 4.30am on the 20th May (after losing 1 day in the air), we [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone, Just in case you are wondering why we haven't updated the blog recently, we just arrived in New Zealand on the 20th and are making our way now in a campervan to Rotorua, Lake Toupo, Wellington, Fox Glacier and Christchurch. We have limited internet access so it might be a couple of weeks before we update it again so don't worry. Hope all is well, talk to you soon. Love from Deirdre and Diarmuid. [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, We arrived in Santiago at Los Heroes station at around 11am on Saturday and took the metro to our hostel - The Atacama Hostel just off Providencia Avenue. We had heard Santiago was a dirty grimy city and that you wouldn't spend more than a couple of days there, but we actually found it to be a nice place, although maybe it was the low expectations that made us think that. We were pretty shattered after the bus journey, sitting in between two crying toddlers all night and a woman with a serious chest infection so we didn't venture [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, We arrived in Bariloche in Upper Patagonia at about three in the afternoon and it was really cold and raining, ha welcome back Irish weather. We made our way to our home for the next few days, the Bariloche Hostel which was very quiet, as its low season here, autumn time and they are actually closing for a few weeks very soon, we also found out later that most excursions, kayaking, rafting and sadly for Diarmuid fishing is out of season. The drive into the town was like driving into Connemara, the whole countryside was barron and rugged with [View Full Entry]

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Hi there, Well we arived in Puerto Varas on Wednesday morning after crossing over the scenic snowy Andes Mountains by bus. We left Bariloche at 8am, very very sadly, and crossed into Chile. The bus was supposed to take 7 hours, but we arrived into Puerto Varas at around 12pm, gaining an hour as Chile is one hour behind, we suspect it didn't take as long as intended because they probably take into account border control delays and weather conditions. There was no dramatic change in scenery in Chile compared with Argentina, except maybe for the small wood panel houses, slighly [View Full Entry]

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