We seem to have spent rather a lot of our time tasting our way around New Zealand. We started taking a photo outside each winery to remind ourselves which ones we had been to. Once we put them all together we realised we had been to rather a few... So rather than spread out entries for Hawkes Bay, Martinborough and Marlborough, here is a rundown of all the wineries we have visited so far. Otago still to go, so we are hoping to add to the fine collection of snaps! We didn't do all these in one day. Honest. It has [View Full Entry]

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The perfect antidote to all the rugged isolation of the Northland - Rotorua. Tourist heaven. There are so many things to see and do (and pay for) here, it would be impossible to get bored you might think. However, when we arrived early and eager at Wai o Tapu - one of the major geothermal parks in the area - we met the most disillusioned looking crusty traveller type shuffling around. He looked at us, sighed and said with resignation, "Another smelly day". It is pretty stinky here. There's a lot of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere and the whole place [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Auckland safe and sound a day and half after leaving Chile. Crossing the International Date Line did mess with our heads. We lost an entire day! Good news for the budget though. Our planning for the NZ leg of our trip had been minimal. We arrived at five in the morning without a clue what we were really going to do. A friend's brother had agreed to let us crash at his empty house in a pretty suburb of the city, but we hadn't decided how we were going to get there or what we would do next. [View Full Entry]

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Time to close the South American chapter of our travels. Our final ten days spent in Chile seem a bit of a distant memory now. Many apologies for not getting round to the blog for so long. We left Bolivia at the end of our tour of the salt flats, hopping on a bus and waving goodbye to our fellow jeep survivors who had another full day of kneecap torture to endure. Think we made the right decision there. At the border we waited for ages to be allowed in to Chile officially. Full bag searches and disinfectant for our shoes. [View Full Entry]

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So everything was going to plan perfectly for our last few days in Bolivia. In order not to spend any more time drifting, we booked our train ticket from Oururo to Uyuni before we left for Rurrenabaque, because we heard they sell out pretty quickly. We just had to catch a bus to Oururo from La Paz the day after we got back from the rainforest. Super. Except our flight back from Rurrenabaque was cancelled. No explanation. We were told we had a seat on a flight the following day, but that was the day we were meant to be catching [View Full Entry]

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We took the decision to spend more time in Bolivia than we originally planned. With our travels in South America coming to an end, it seemed a big shame not to see something of the rainforests and wetlands that cover a large portion of this continent. After several weeks of dry high altitude living, the thought of mosquitos, creepy crawlies and drowning in our own sweat somehow seemed rather appealing all of a sudden. We booked three days in the Madidi rainforest national park, followed by three days in the Pampas, through America Tours in La Paz, who were a slick [View Full Entry]

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After a couple of days resting in La Paz, experiencing the craziness of the street markets where you can buy anything from dried llama foetuses to a new toilet, we bit the bullet and signed up for the infamous downhill mountain biking experience along the world´s most dangerous road. Everybody we´ve met who has the t-shirt recommended Gravity Assisted in La Paz as the company to go with. Excellent bikes and the best guides. As well as a great safety record. They certainly were a splendid organisation. We went for the full package. Top notch full-suspension Kona bikes, protective clothing, gogg [View Full Entry]

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It had to happen sooner or later. Graham started feeling a bit stomachy about 10 minutes over the Peru-Bolivia border and spent a couple of days dashing between bed and bathroom. I got a lesser bug two days later. Neither of us were horrendously ill, but it wasn´t very pleasant. We ended up staying a lot longer than anticipated on the shores of Lake Titicaca. On a not unrelated note, Titicaca, we learned, is pronounced Titichacha (like the ch in ´loch´). In the local Aymara language it means stone puma. And it seems everyone has a good laugh about tourists pronouncing [View Full Entry]

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Arequipa is a lovely city. You can´t go 10 steps in Cusco without being accosted or hassled to buy things or go on tours or eat in restaurants. Here you might be asked if you´d like to try a restaurant in the main square, but that´s about it. The place is generally full of people going about their own business. Cusco was wonderful though and we are still missing the place, but the atmostphere is a little calmer here. We spent our first few days being very lazy tourists. We ended up staying in a slightly nicer hostal than usual (Torres [View Full Entry]

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After failing to make the required three month advance booking deadline for the oversubscribed Inca Trail, we opted for a 5 day trek through the mountains to Machu Picchu with SAS Travel (no connection with previous employers!). We reached an altitude of 4600 mts and covered over 60 kms in total. It was hard, but worth every painful step. The trip was all the more memorable because we were part of a group of utter lunatics - three students from California and three Kiwi blokes in a handlebar-moustache growing contest and hell bent on an anarchic tim [View Full Entry]

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