This morning we popped down to the Richmond Mall because menswear was on sale at Farmer's (department store) and Sandra thought that Robin needed some new shorts. While Robin and Sandra went bargain hunting we had a bit of a look around the mall which is quite small compared with what we are used to at Westfield Fountain Gate or Northland. Our best find was the card shop having a half price sale on all greeting cards. I can't resist well-priced cards so I spent about NZ$20 on half a dozen very nice quality greeting cards. We had another very lazy afternoon in sunny Nelson. The weather has been much nicer since we crossed over to the South Island. Although it is a bit windy. We are being blamed for bringing the wind with us from ... read more

Today we needed to travel via Cook Strait to the South Island to get to Robin and Sandra's place in Nelson (Richmond). The strait was named after Captain James Cook, the first European to sail it's waters. After climbing a hill on Arapaoa Island in 1770 Captain Cook saw there was a sea passage from the Pacific Ocean to the Tasman Sea. Previous European explorer's had not determined that New Zealand was made up of two main islands rather than just one. Sandra emailed us on Monday to let us know that the ferry services had been cancelled following Sunday's earthquake. On Wednesday Bernie received a message from Interislander Ferries to say that the service on Friday would leave at 8.30am instead of 9.00am. We hadn't received any further updates so we assumed we would be ... read more

Well, this is a first - we are now in New Zealand and I haven't finished blogging our South American adventure! My excuse is that we decided to move house almost as soon as we arrived home from our last holiday in April and the time spent preparing our house for sale, selling, searching for a new house, buying a new house, moving house and making it feel like home resulted in zero time for sitting down to finish the blog!! For those who want to know how we spent our last few days in Patagonia you might want to scroll back to previous blogs. I am making a concerted effort to finish recording our last holiday simultaneously with writing about our time in NZ. Gidget and Finbar started their holiday yesterday when I dropped them ... read more

We departed Santiago at 01:05 which was only ten minutes behind schedule. The rest of Sunday was pretty much lost in transit due to crossing the International Date Line as we flew over the Pacific. Steps 437 (0.30km)... read more

This morning we were able to sleep in a bit after four mornings in a row where we were up at 6.00am or earlier!! We were on the move again today, heading back down to Punta Arenas. We were in Punta Arenas 20 days ago when the m.s. Zandaam docked there for the day. Well, Bernie and Meredith made it into Punta Arenas, that was the first day of my confinement to our cabin. Punta Arenas was going to be all new for me! Fortunately for us today's coach was departing at a more civilised hour and we didn't have to rise before the sun. After a relaxed breakfast, we were collected from Hotel Glaciares and driven back across town to the bus depot. Our seats were numbered the same as for the trip down from ... read more