Seeing as our body clocks thought that it was the middle of the night we both slept for most of the first half of the flight from Santiago to Auckland - once we'd been fed. Later on during the flight I watched 'Truth' an interesting film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford that explored the truth - or otherwise - of the 2004 CBS 60 Minutes investigation into George W Bush's military service (or 'allegedly' lack thereof). Bernie was grumpy when we arrived in Auckland. After spending the entire flight unable to fully recline his seat at the back of the aircraft his back was sore. He was in the back row with two other guys. Initially the other larger guy was in the centre and it was pretty squishy, but they eventually worked out they'd ... read more

It's going to be a long, long day today as we commence our journey home. We are not flying to Santiago until 7.35pm tonight so we have some time (quite a lot actually!) for a last look around Punta Arenas before we are driven to the airport mid-afternoon. It was cold, but sunny today so it was reasonably pleasant for our last minute sightseeing. We wandered back 'downtown' to visit the Palacio Sara Braun a stately home built in the 19th century on wealth garnered from the wool trade. Judging from the opulence of the residence wool was a very lucrative industry to be involved in. Our next stop was the Punta Arenas Cemetery officially named the Cementerio Municipal Sara Braun. The huge stone gateway was donated in 1919 by Sara Braun, the richest and most ... read more

This morning we were picked up for a day trip into the Torres del Paine National Park with guide Eduardo and driver Gregorio. Gregorio proved to be an excellent wildlife spotter and he stopped the minibus on the side of the road on numerous occasions so that we could see eagles, condors, juvenile condors, caracas, a skunk, rheas and guanacos ... all of those before we got into the national park! We stopped at a view point at the end of Lago Sarmiento from which there is a fabulous view of the three granite torres (towers) for which the national park is named. Well, sometimes there is a fabulous view of the towers. Unfortunately this morning they were shrouded in cloud. Although it was very cold this morning it was mainly sunny with only patches of ... read more

While I was in the shower this morning, Bernie went onto the Qantas website to try to change our seat allocation for the flight from Punta Arenas to Santiago because he thought our seats were too far back in the plane. Hmmn, that went well, Bernie said that just going onto the site to look at whether other seats were available caused our seats for the long haul Santiago to Auckland leg to be changed to the very, very, back row - right next to the toilets. Great! I guess we'll try again to change our seats when we check-in? We had another early start today. I'm getting to be a bit over all of this getting up in the dark! And, once again, we were ready slightly before the scheduled pick-up time only to end ... read more

I am not a happy traveller today!! We had to be up at 6.00am to be ready to be collected from our city hotel at 7.00am for our transfer back to the airport. Being woken by the alarm at 6.00am made me grumpy to start with! Then we ate our self-catered breakfast in our room because the hotel's buffet breakfast one, didn't start until 6.30am so it would have been a big rush and two, was so awful (based on last week's experience) that it wasn't an appetising option anyway. Then, just as we finalised our packing to go downstairs Bernie received a notification to say that our flight was going to be delayed by AN HOUR. So that's an extra hour of sleep I could have had. We went downstairs to meet Andrea who whisked ... read more