Keen Kiwis

We arrived at Newark airport and had vague ideas of how to get to Anges house in Brooklyn. We ended up meeting a lovely American lady who showed us how to work the subway and took us most of the way there, it's pretty straight forward once you know how it works. We saw some colourful characters on our tube rides, which made for some interesting people watching. Ange was living in a little apartment in Brooklyn. It was so good to see her and she fed us up with epic food and clothed me as I had no warm clothes apart from my puffer. Wow it was bitterly cold. We loved cruising around New York, the first day we spent shopping on Broadway. I didn't have any luck but Mikey picked up quite a few ... read more

Tuesday 28th September We used the free bikes and went to the museum. Had lunch for $2.25 which was an epic soup and then meat with rice and veges and juice.The museum was so so random. There were real shrunken human heads in display units. The indigenous people used to kill their enemies, remove the skull, boil the head and then reshape it to be a miniature head and wear it around their neck. Gross. Wednesday 29th We went on a tour with the hostal to the market which was so incredible. So much produce of every kind. So many exotic fruits with amazing colours. We stocked up on fruit and all sorts of odds and ends for our hike and caught the bus to the Cajas national park for $1.50. Such a beautiful place 3950m ... read more

October 7th-18th Suprise suprise our plans have changed again! We decided to only spend a week in Colombia as it takes such a long time to bus anywhere. We figured we will do Ecuador really well and then Colombia really well another time. I've added some photos at the start from our time in Batopilas. We flew out from Chihuahua city and landed in Bogota, Colombia. We stayed at the most amazing hostel its called 12:12. We met a guy called Isaac, who is the first Kiwi we've met on our travels, on the plane and he joined us for a few days hanging out in Bogota. He is so classic so we had a great time. We weren't overwhelmed with Bogota, just a big gritty city. We enjoyed checking out the gold museum with artifacts ... read more

Thursday 18th September: Today was one of those awful travel days where you spend hours and hours on the internet trying to figure out where to go and how to get there and feel like you're getting no-where. We spent a few hours last night and then the whole day today on the internet! So frustrating. We decided to up-end our plans completely and head to the Copper Canyon in the North of Mexico. Getting there was another problem to deal with. We first looked at flying which was viable until we found out it was $50 NZD just to get to the airport at one end, plus accommodation etc which adds up. We then looked at an overnight bus but it had gone up to $124 NZD each for a 13 hour ride to Mexico ... read more

Wednesday 27th August: We went out of town today to a village called Teotitlan, which is about 40 minutes out of Oaxaca. Reyna, our Zapotec teacher, was awesome. She has a huge outdoor, original Zapotec kitchen, within her family property. She gave us woven baskets each and we walked down to the local daily market. It was incredible, there were so many gorgeous wee old Zapotec ladies walking around wearing their traditional garb of hand stitched aprons, head scarves and carrying woven baskets (Mum you would have LOVED to see and do this with us). They were all so short, I was head and shoulders above most! We picked up all the fresh produce we needed. I noticed Reyna greeted her friends and aquatainces with a different greeting. She explained that If she knew someone really ... read more