Franland

Well that's what it seems like when you´re hiking the Inca trail for 4 days anyway. Admittedly, the super-strong porters who lug around 30kgs of camping equipment, food etc along the trail (faster than the completely unburdened hikers) were a couple of feet shorter, and quite a bit less handsome than the real deal, but they were pretty amazing nonetheless. As we huffed and puffed away, fighting for air in the high altitude, they ran past us, big mounds of moving stuff! I absolutely loved the Inca trail, and while we were there I got a real sense that I was doing something special. The trail was really beautiful in places, and really hard work in others, but it was just so rewarding to walk for 4 days and end up at the incredible Machu Picchu. ... read more

Horse trekking through the Andes was really beautiful, and my novice nervousness about being thrown from a galloping stallion, and flung metres through the air, was luckily unfounded! My horse was pretty slow and ponderous, and, once I´d worked out a few little tricks, pretty easy to control. It still wandered off occasionally, and seemed to have a penchant for taking alternative routes. Inevitably, this often involved going through the middle of the world´s most prickly bushes. Nevertheless, It felt pretty cool to be going through the mountains with a couple of gauchos, on our western-style saddles - yee ha!!!! That night (perhaps unwisely so soon after my first horse ride...) we got a night bus to Buenos Aires. We spent several nights there, sampling steak, red wine and tango. We also explored some of Buenos ... read more

Ola!!! Our last few days in New Zealand were spent in Rotorua, Waitomo caves, the Bay of Islands and Auckland. In Rotorua, we went to Te Papa and Wai-o-tapu, both thermal sites with geysers, boiling mud and smelly sulphur. When people say that Rotorua stinks, it is not a reflection of the town itself (although it is quite dead and not especially attractive). Rotorua just needs some kind of giant air freshener. Some areas are worse than others, but the whole place has a general stinky sulphurous whiff about it. Some of the thermal stuff was absolutely incredible. I loved the boiling mud and bubbling pools of water, although struggled to compute that it is all natural and not powered by the national grid... We also spent a relaxing few hours in the Polynesian spa in ... read more

After Darwin we flew to Cairns and, in tribute to those of you who went to Newnham College or boarding school, we stayed at the Cairn's Girls Hostel. All very clean and homely, with Dawn Shit-bugger (possibly not her real name, but definitely should have been considering the frequency with which she used those words) slightly aggressively looking after 'her' girls... We spent a couple of days wandering round Cairns and getting free meals with vouchers from the hostel. Now, there is something strange about getting given food vouchers. Although backpackers love anything free, handing over a voucher for my dinner does make me feel a bit like a benefit fraud. Fortunately, I managed to battle these sentiments long enough to hand over the voucher and eat my food... On our third day in Cairns, we ... read more

As you can see, despite having only been in Oz for 4 days, I am already picking up the lingo. Well here we are in Darwin. Having been told by a couple of guys in Singapore that people only go to Darwin when they're on the run from the police or want to disappear, we are pleasantly surprised to find that Darwin is quite small and dull, and doesn't appear to be particularly infested with dangerous escapees... The main danger appears to be to out piggy banks - Australia is seriously expensive. We have been spoilt recently I guess with food being ridiculously cheap everywhere we've been, but the prospect of daily living costs here is plain scary!!! Our flight from Singapore was slightly more exciting than we might have liked, with a combination of us ... read more