Wow, we can barely believe it, we are back in …. NEW ZEALAND! After visiting 36 countries in 6 different continents, we’ve clocked up a shocking 43 flights, flown just over 151 hours and spent roughly 96 hours hanging at airports around the world! We’ve crossed 19 land borders, traveled by plane, bus, train, overland trucks, 4wd, ferry, on foot, by flippers, camels, horses, inner tubes, hire-cars, mini buses, quad bikes, scooters, gullets, makoro(canoe), steamboat, cruise ships, tuk-tuk, ambulance!, cable cars, river boats and taxis! We've slept in 5 star hotels, i [View Full Entry]

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We arrived into Salta about 10pm at night after a long day on the bus. It was definitely a great drive though, great scenery, and driving down the last few mountains - literally through the clouds - was quite unique! After dumping our gear at the hotel we went for a wander down town to find some food before we crashed out. Wandering around the streets at 11pm, the streets were really busy, loads of activities going on, loads of people and families wandering around! It was a pretty cool place to be. We went to the Main plaza where there [View Full Entry]

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After leaving the laughable Bolivian Immigration Centre we drove for about 35minutes to the Chilean Immigration. This was quite amazing as we had been driving in Chile for only 5 minutes before we came to a pristine tar-seal road! (I don’t think we even saw one in Bolivia!), along with this change in roads came an unexpected change in temperature - it almost immediately went from about 10 degrees to about 35!! Seriously, it felt like as soon as we entered Chile, someone had switched on a giant heater! The terrain was identical, it was just heaps hotter… very weird. Our [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in La Paz, Bolivia in pretty bad shape - were both absolutely exhausted! We left Lima on a 9pm flight - to Santiago - then had 4hrs at the Santiago Airport to kill before our next flight at 6.50am. Very grim indeed, Bunny managed to doze for a while, but I didn’t manage a wink! Soon enough we were on our plane to La Paz , but we were in for another little treat first… the plane stopped at a tiny little desert airport in the Chilean town of Iqueque, to refuel and dump some domestic passengers. This really was [View Full Entry]

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Well our first night in Peru was really exciting…… ahem….. it consisted of a late flight from Quito to Lima (after paying US$80 bucks at Quito for an unexpected departure tax ouch!), a 10 min taxi ride to a hotel near Lima airport for a whole 3 hours sleep, an argument with the hotel over free transfers as we were told they were free - then they tried to charge for them - solved after Kristi threatened to write a bad review of them on their hotel website, which actually worked! - Then a trip back to the airport for our [View Full Entry]

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The next morning we left early for our tour around the Amazon, Banos and Cotopaxi, on the way we stopped at some hot springs, but Kristi and I were not really keen on swimming as it was damned cold and pretty miserable weather! We did go on a wee hike around the spring’s area, which was quite cool as we found out about some of the local flora and fauna etc. The next stop was the town of Tena, which lies just outside the Amazon area of Ecuador; we only stopped here briefly to stock up supplies for our journey into [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Quito at about 10pm and were stunned at how fast the immigration and baggage claim services are, we were through customs (with visas) and had our bags in about 5-10minutes max - no exaggeration, it was outstanding! In no time at all we were being driven back to the Amazon Inn by a really nice Ecuadorian named Daniel, who works at the inn. The guesthouse exceeded our expectations, it was immaculately clean throughout and quite modern - our room itself was huge, with good facilities and a fridge - pre-stocked with soft drinks and beer, hooray for Ecuador! [View Full Entry]

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At the end of our cruise, having eaten our way through an atrocious amount of food on board, we then practically ROLLED down the gangway and out to the taxi ranks for our trip to South Beach! From the cruise terminal we took a taxi to “Sobe” for our ‘second’ stay in Miami. Unfortunately it started raining pretty much straight away - damn Olga! So we lazed about for the afternoon at our hotel - making use of the free Wi-fi internet to catch up with the rest of the world - being on the cruise was like we had left [View Full Entry]

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Our second stop on the cruise was to the wonderful Mexican island of Cozumel, just off the Yucatan Peninsula. We got off the ship at the international port and were soon on a bus heading to the nearby attraction of ‘Discover Mexico’. This ‘park’ is really quite nifty - we arrived and then watched a 15minute video on the highlights of Mexico, which is pretty cool, if not more-or-less propaganda! Then we headed out into the main park area where there is dozens of scale models of all the main attractions in Mexico - from the awesome Aztec and Mayan Step [View Full Entry]

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We were both very excited to go to Jamaica. We left the ship early and hopped on a bus out to the ‘Happy Retreat’ Plantation, where we had a tour around the plantation homestead (circa 1730-35) and learned about all the local plants, fruits and spices and how to prepare the famous Jamaican ‘Jerk’ foods. The owner of the homestead also gave us a brief history lesson on the Ocho Rios area and the homestead itself - we even got to try some local Jamaican rum punch - which was yummy! We saw some of the local farm animals too - [View Full Entry]

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