Whilst Steve and Hannah were with us with did a bit of a road trip to see the main South Island sights (see separate blogs) and we also spent some time in and around Queenstown sampling the toursit activities on offer here. As Steve and Hannah were keen to hit the slopes we spent 4 days on the snow. Day one saw us heading back up to Cardrona, as we had liked it so much when we went on the way up to Christchurch. The day started well as we drove through a heavy layer of cloud half way up the [View Full Entry]

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Part two of the road trip saw us heading up to Mount Cook National Park, via Wanaka. On the way up to Wanaka we met with policeman number 3 in the space of just 5 days, we were beginning to feel liked marked men! So police pullovers = 3, tickets = 2 (Joey not so good at sweet talking the police)!! We should like to say in our defence that all three "misdemeanors" should not have been ticketable offences in the UK but fair do's they are offences here so wrists dully slapped we continued on our journey. It was a [View Full Entry]

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So after 5 weeks in New Zealand we thought we'd better get out and see some of this famously beautiful country, and what better opportunity than a 2 week visit from our friends Steve and Hannah. As they were arriving at Christchurch airport we decided to take a couple of days to drive the 500km back up to Christchurch calling at two of the other South Island ski fields on the way. Firstly, we spent the day at Cardrona, which is about 1.5 hours drive from where we are staying, close to Wanaka. It's a great ski field for snowboarders as [View Full Entry]

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Whilst in the adventure capital of the world, we thought it would be ridiculous not to participate in some extreme activities, so I (Joe) decided to book in on a bungy jump and a skydive with Steve, whilst Sarah and Hannah booked themselves in for some spa treatments! Originally we were booked to do the bungy and skydive on the Saturday but unfortunately as mentioned in previous posts, whilst boarding, Steve managed to land a jump on his head/shoulder. This resulted in mild concussion and a grade one tear of his ACL, thus we arranged to reschedule for the following Wednesday. [View Full Entry]

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Well, it has been an interesting 10 days since we last blogged with some highs and lows. We've had some excellent days on the snow (see videos/pics on the "Snowboarding" blog) including night skiing, where the main pistes are floodlit and you can ski/board until 9pm, and a lesson each to hone our skills on the slopes. But we have also had a few forced days off after a couple of near disasters with the car and the house (more on that below) and right now the weather has turned bad - there is snow at last but it is combined [View Full Entry]

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This blog entry has been set up to document our amazing (and disastrous) snowboarding efforts. To be updated with regular videos and photos. [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in NZ early on Sunday morning after 14 hours flying. We had arranged to fly into Christchurch so that we could pick up our snowboard bag (more on that later!) and buy a car. The car bit was a lot easier than we had anticipated it would be and we promptly became the proud owners of a 1993 Subaru Legacy (focus on the Subaru part and not the fact that it is an old estate car). Anyway, we love our new wheels and they dutifully got us from Christchurch to Queenstown so they can't be all bad despite some [View Full Entry]

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So from the searing heat of Rio, we headed to Santiago in Chile, which lived up to its name by being pretty cold - wearing only shorts and a T-shirt on the plane was certainly not a great idea. We were essentially only in Chile en route to New Zealand but our itinerary meant that we had two days to experience Santiago. We thought it would be an excellent opportunity to visit one of the many vineyards in this country, building its reputation for quality wines, so we visited the Undurraga vineyard about 40 km south of Santiago. Our lack of [View Full Entry]

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Sad to leave the tranquility of Parati we hopped on yet another bus to head to Rio. The bus drove along the coast road so there were some pretty spectacular views, shame about the kid puking two rows behind! We arrived at Rio bus station, and after a brief domestic about whether we were on the right bus (we were!), we scrambled off to find ourselves in the world famous Copacabana district (cue much humming of the Barry Manilow classic). We had booked into a hostel that lauded itself as the best hostel in South America, as voted in the Telegraph. [View Full Entry]

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From Iguazu we decided to take a bus to Sao Paulo and from there directly on to a little coastal town called Paraty (pronounced "Parachi"). This was a pretty gruelling journey totalling over 24 hours but we decided not to stop in Sao Paulo as the guidebook suggested the main sites were museums so not really our kind of place (i.e too cultural) so we decided to spend our time in Brazil in and around Rio. The bus ride from Iguazu took an "interesting" turn when we were raided by the military police. It did not help that we cant speak [View Full Entry]

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