Tim Laura

Nearly a year on, and our lovely adventure has finally come to an end. Where did we leave you last..?? Oh yes, in New Zealand. From the South Island we took the ferry back to the North Island and started to make our way back up to Auckland where we were to sell the van. Along the way we stopped for a few days in Taupo by the largest lake in Australasia. We canoed around to some incredible Mauri carvings which we discovered were over 30 years old! Another piece of New Zealand's ancient history. The highlight of our visit to the area was the Tongariro Crossing, often described as the greatest one day hike in the country. We waited for a clear day and then headed of early in the morning and set a ... read more

Our final two stops before New Zealand took us to the islands of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Moorea (just off Tahiti). After thinking it would never happen to us, we got upgraded to business class on the first leg of the journey! Much excitement ensued as we were presented with delightful meals on white bone china crockery, and lots of fun buttons to press which moved the seat backs to near-horizontal. The flight passed swiftly and we slipped from our ridiculously large seats and walked into the matchbox airport in Hanga Roa, Rapa Nui's one and only town (village in truth). The island is home to just 3000 people and is most well known for the mysterious Moai heads which can be found all over the place. There were two tribes about 1000 years ago ... read more

Well firstly, Merry Christmas to everyone!!! We hope that you have a relaxing break, eat too much food, watch too much TV, play old board games and enjoy the family's company. We will be spending xmas in the small town of Villa La Angostura in the beautiful lake district of Argentina. We shall fill our time sadly without our family, walking amongst the pine forests, taking in the beautiful display of colourful wild flowers (it is spring here) and chilling out in the nice hostel we have found. To get here we have travelled over 2000km on some gruelling bus journeys. From Arequipa in Peru where we last left you we headed into Chile and were instantly shocked by the difference in wealth. Ramshackle homes were replaced by neat houses with front lawns and and a ... read more

So after so much time in the planning, we finally set foot on the Inca Trail. Many things are said about the trail, mainly about how it is so hard that at points you just want to cry and curl up in a ball to save yourself from more pain, so as you can imagine we were a little apprehensive about it! It's also the start of the rainy season, so everyone had told us to expect bad weather and be prepared to get no view of Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate (a ruin on the hillside above the site) on the final day. We headed off and had a very easy start to the trail, and our guide, Eduin, appeared to know his stuff which was encouraging after having bought the cheapest trek we ... read more

We have finally come to the end of our time here at the animal refuge after two months, and the time has moved so quickly it's mindblowing. Laura spent 3 weeks with Quirqui the puma, then changed to the Spider Monkey Park to work with Tim's 28 new black, long legged friends. The spiders have seen a lot of changes to their home over the last few weeks, the largest one being the introduction of a new female monkey named Bibi. She has been at the refuge for about 7 months, and all of that time was spent in quarantine on a small cord with little interaction with other monkeys. Tim spent day after day visiting her, trying to convince 'der management' that she should come up to the Spider Park to be integrated into the ... read more