deankay2

Arriving in to Singapore late we headed straight to our hotel in the Geylang area of Singapore to get some sleep. We haven't planned to stay in Singapore too long so we decided to get up early and catch the MRT to the city where we got off at the City Hall, we had a stroll around the city taking in the colonial buildings, the Raffles Hotel, cricket club and St Andrews cathedral and the old parliament house before ending up down by the River walking along Clarke Quay and Boat Quay which are located right next to the cities highrise. Singapore doesn't feel much different to most modern cities, it was very clean and safe and has an interesting history. The weather has been humid enough but not too uncomfortable, we walked from the River ... read more

Well the Blue mountains really took me by surprise, it was not like I remembered at all. We set off, Mum, Col, Deb and I early on Monday the 18th, we headed to the Zig Zag Railway near Lithgow. We relaxed on the short train journey, taking in the views and enjoying the old train carriages. In the afternoon we headed towards Katoomba where we stayed. We stopped by at the old Hartley village, only a few buildings in the street really, it was good to see how the old houses would have looked here as the early settlers came out. As we headed through Mt Victoria we stopped at Sunset Rock lookout for our first glimpse of the vast valleys, in Mt Victoria we went to an old museum at the railway station that had ... read more

Well being back in OZ for the first time in a while is great, and especially as we have 6 weeks here to enjoy without being in a rush, so it should be a good time to spend some time with family and friends as well as check out a few old haunts and hopefully get some good weather. In the lead up to Christmas Deb and I had family around to celebrate Debs birthday on the 20th of December and to catch up with them all after such a long time. The last time some of them had seen Deb was back in November of 2004 and we even had a few new babies to meet up with that we hadn't met. We had a great day, a good old BBQ (beef sausages mmmmm), a ... read more

We didn't spend much time in the port city of Valparaiso, but the 7 hour journey to get there was very much a scenic one, we passed through the Andes, with some spectacular roads, then through the fertile valley in Chile with plenty of crops and vineyards covering the valley floor and sides of the mountains. We arrived at Vina del Mar on the coast first, with a couple of small little beaches and a resort type of feel. As we hit the coast and headed south we could see the coastline and the city of Valparaiso seemingly connected to Vina del Mar. We stayed our two nights in Hostal Limon Verde, it was in a great spot just up a hill from the busy town, the building was very cool, historic but yet done up ... read more

Bariloche lived up to our expectations, and the two days we spent on a bus on desolate Route 40 made it more the worthwhile. The journey from El Chalten was long, our first day was a drive of 12 hours to Perito Moreno. The scenery was again desolate and we even stopped at the aptly named La Siberia station for empanadas on the first day. I don't know how the people live out there, the climate is so harsh, with the wind not letting up much. Perito Moreno was a small enough town (but bigger than anything we had seen in 12 hours) it was freezing when we got there and we had to be up again early hours for our journey the next morning. Day two was another long drive, 13 more hours, staring out ... read more