20th June-20th July 2009 Our loooong bus journey (it was actually 33 hours) consisted of not many food stops but a bus load of very friendly, singing and slightly drunk Ecuadorians (Chileans and Columbians). We arrived in Quito (Ecuador's capital) at 7am and in our slightly tired state managed, for the first time in 9 months, to get ripped off by a very smiley taxi driver. We explored the old town and became more culturally aware of Ecuador before packing up our things to head northwards the next day to La Delicia, Nanegal, the closest town to the Santa Lucia Ecolodge. [View Full Entry]

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...or a few things we'd like to mention about our last 10 (ish) months of travelling... This adventure all began after a bad day at work in a school cupboard in Weston, Southampton which resulted in a text message to a toilet cubicle in Winchester Hospital. The responding text message set it in stone that we would (finally) be going on our world 'road' trip... The fun commenced on 30th September 2008 and since leaving the U.K with our backpacks; We have been away for 294 days, visited 12 countries and 3 continents, tried to speak 8 different languages and used [View Full Entry]

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27th May-19th June 2009 As we were about to depart Bolivia, the travelling girl clan of Luce, Rach, Jamie and Mandy, did what we were 'supposed' to do (Lonely Planet) and changed all of our hard cash aka Bolivianas into Peruvian Soles since it was supposed to be very difficult to change over the border. We were all very pleased with our organisational skills until the 'helpful' bus driver launched into a very serious speech about how we MUST NOT change our money until we got into Peru because there were many instances of false Soles being exchanged for Bolvianas and [View Full Entry]

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9th May- 27th May 2009 An early(ish) start and we were off towards the Chilean-Bolivian border where we all had our bags searched for apples and other fruits, luckily they didn't want to take our chocolate or Luce's needles...thank goodness. Then, it was a quick ascent to high altitude at one of the Bolivian border crossings where our 4x4 jeep driver, Jonny, loaded our bags onto the jeep and the four of us (Luce, Rach, Daz-our new friend from our Chile trip, and Daphne-a new found addition to our travelling band) hopped in ready for our 3 day trek...already it was [View Full Entry]

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21st April-9th May 2009 After a eleven hour flight from Auckland we were pretty amazed by our first glimpse of Chile, you don't get much more of an impressive descent than flying through the Andes to then land in Santiago, Chile. It was a bit of a culture shock to find it difficult to understand what was being said (after four months of most people understanding us!) and that nobody really understood what we were saying...our phrase book was going to come in pretty handy. After a few days in Santiago (where we braved the fenicular and small wobbly cable car [View Full Entry]

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26th March-21st April Arriving in Queenstown we couldn´t wait to get going on some more adrenaline fun and quickly travelled to the Shotover River to go jet boating, it was very fast and we were lucky not to lose our arms and heads considering how closely we skimmed though the canyon. The next day we decided to rise early and try and burn some calories by hiking a little trek around Queenstown...not sure if it worked but we took in some beautiful scenery. However scenic treks were not really what we went to Queenstown for and so we set about organising [View Full Entry]

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15th February- 25th March So onwards again... After an enjoyable few days in Welly, catching up with Kate, we set off for our first leg of the adventure on the South Island. We shared the ferry crossing with many sheep (alive) and (dead) animal carcasses, these made our journey very fragrant... Once on the 'mainland' (as the South islanders call their part of NZ) we pitched our new home, Buckingham Palace (Buck for short), for the first time and awaited, with baited breath, the arrival of Rob (again...we really couldn't get rid of him!). On the sunny first day in Picton [View Full Entry]

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26th January- 18th February 2009 Seven weeks of Australian fun whizzed by in the blink of an eye and all of a sudden we were sleeping like homeless hobos in the check in lounge of Cairns airport, as always we amused ourselves...this time with a 'silent disco'-Glasto goers you should know what we mean! The descent into Auckland was pretty amazing, clear skies enabled us to see some of the geographical delights that were awaiting us. The bus journey from the airport to the center was a little less smooth, we were on a full capacity bus with a bit of [View Full Entry]

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5th January- 26th January 2009 We have decided that we have now been in the land of down under long enough to confidently try out their language...so watch out for the lingo... So onto to Brisbane. We checked into the hostel and all was looking pretty good until we opened the door to our dorm...a bomb, consisting of empty shampoo bottles, underwear, old food plates, nutella/peanut butter jars, dust, clothes and shoes, had exploded, crikey, all over our 10 person dorm...two of the occupants had been living there for 4 months, we really don't know how! Whilst in Brisbane we explored [View Full Entry]

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8th December 2008-4th January 2009 We felt pretty relieved and excited about touching down in Melbourne, not only were we going to meet up with many, many people but we were guarenteed hot showers, a comfortable bed and endless cups of tea...for at least 2 weeks or so anyway whilst we were staying with our friends Gail and Craig. Gail (Rachael's friend from uni) met us at the airport and needless to say Rach was pretty (understatement!) excited. We spent the first few (okay maybe a few more) days relaxing, washing (ourselves and clothes) and getting used to the fact that [View Full Entry]

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