I have to admit that I found the start of the South American adventure pretty tough. Staff at each hostel we stayed at, other travellers, strangers on buses and guide books all told a mixture of, sometimes conflicting, warnings; "be careful with your bags", "I know someone who was mugged and stabbed", "always carry your passport with you or you can get fined", "leave your valuables at the hostel", "never leave your valuables at the hostel". All that and a dose of jetlag left me paranoid and walking down the street after dark had me nervous...despite the fact that we have [View Full Entry]

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So a new month......a new continent.........a new country.........and a new city. We left Newzealand after almost 8 months on the road and headed for the 8th country of our trip and its most untrodden and unplanned section - South America. Arrival was strange to say the least, our LAN Chile flight left Auckland for its 11 hour journey across the entire width of the Pacific ocean and arrived 4 hours before it left! The whole crews (including the captains) refusal/inability to speak any english was only a sign of things to come and the sheer rudeness of the air hostesses played [View Full Entry]

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New Zealand´s north island has a lot of underground thermal activity and there are numerous sites dedicated to geothermal occurences. En route to Rotorua we passed Waiotapa thermal wonderland and decided to pay it a visit, mainly to see the ´Lady Knox' geyser famous for its 10.15am spouting. Left alone the geyser would spurt naturally every few days but by adding a little soap to it the park is able to ensure it only happens at the advertised time and as such can charge visitors $25 each for seeing the spetcacle. A few minutes before 10.15am as the audience eagerly waited [View Full Entry]

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I can quite honestly say that after 228 days of travelling we haven't had more than a few that could be described as 'boring' or 'miserable' - but the two days after the Parry clan headed back to Blighty nearly doubled our trips 'bad day' count as we both went cold turkey on family and headed north to New Zealand's capital Wellington (or Welly to its residents). I don't know if my frame of mind slightly clouded my judgement of Christchurch - but I didn't really like it and was glad we had spent all of our time on the South [View Full Entry]

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The road trip with Matt's family continued with a visit to Milford Sound; I wasn't too sure what to expect but knew water was involved as cruises were the big draw and we were booked on one later that day. The journey from Queenstown to Milford began ominously with grey clouds and rain which seemed to worsen the closer we got to our destination. Amazingly this didn't dampen our enthusiasm as the dramatic mountainous scenery we passed en route seemed only to benefit from the downpour as water cascaded through holes in the mountains creating a series of stunning temporary waterfalls. [View Full Entry]

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Christchurch...where am I?? Christchurch, our first stop as we flew into New Zealand, is around 11,000 miles from the UK and considering that the world is about 24,000 miles around its middle we really couldn't have been much further from 'home' - so to be greeted by 5 members of my family as we arrived from Sydney - having spent exactly (to the day) 7 months on the road was a little strange and disorientating. We had been looking forward to meeting up with my Mum, Dad and brother (aka Winn, Mozzer and Weener boy...yep they are a little bit crazy, [View Full Entry]

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Our train journey back to Sydney was fairly uneventful, though we did arrive back two hours later than scheduled. Checking into the same hostel we had checked out of nearly two weeks ago we were delighted to to learn that we had been 'upgraded' to an en-suite room at no extra cost, the first time we had 'owned' our bathroom since arriving in Australia in mid January. Later that afternoon we made our way to Sydney's Channel 10 studios, home of Ready Steady Cook where we had booked 2 tickets to sit in the audience. The females outnumbered the males about [View Full Entry]

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The B100 from Geelong to Warrnambool ...... .....Is better known as the 'Great Ocean Road' (probably because it has a slightly better ring to it) and like most constructed sights in Australia has some connection to British convicts and slave labour. This was one of the trips we had little or no knowledge of before hitting Australia's East Coast, but continual recommendations and its close proximity to Melbourne made it a 'must see' sight before our return to New South Wales, Sydney and our onward flight to New Zealand. Tania and Chris' hospitality continued as they agreed to travel [View Full Entry]

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Matt & Carla The new, the old and the gold The many archicetural styles of MelbourneWhen we began our travels and in particular the Australia section we knew very little about which stops we would make within the countries. Melbourne never really figured in our plans until we met Tania and Chris, themselves from Melbourne, on our journey to Pai in Thailand back in September. From them, other Melbourne residents and fellow travellers we heard nothing but good things about the city and by the time we arrived in Australia in mid January we had decided we definitely had to [View Full Entry]

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And I would drive 2890 miles Some people might say naming a Toyota Hiace campervan Martha is a little unstable but after nearly 3,000 miles, 20 destinations and a time travelling cattle grid all under the same tiny roof, you become pretty attached to your mobile home. So much so that I was considering a whole blog dedicated to the memory of Martha who has now been handed back to her rightful owners. But Carla insisted that this would be a little bit self indulgent and 'silly' (shes probably right) so instead I have decided to list our whole journey in [View Full Entry]

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