Tiene hielo por favor?

Buenos Noches!

 

We've just had an amazing day visiting some glaciers near El Calafate. We went on a boat trip through a lake, sailing past icebergs and coming really close to towering glacier edges. We've visited glaciers in Iceland and New Zealand, but they weren't as impressive up close as these ones. The icebergs were great too and were incredibly blue - very beautiful. We took loads of photos (way too many probably) but can't upload them yet as the internet is painfully slow here.

 

We've got our next few days more or less mapped out. Tomorrow we visit the Perito Moreno glacier, which is one of the few in the world that is advancing rather than receding, and every now and then great chunks of it crash into the lake. On Tuesday we're getting a bus up to El Chalten to do some hiking among the mountains, before coming back here on Thursday and then heading down to the Torres Del Paine park in Chile on Friday. Luckily the weather hasn't turned cold yet, so hopefully we'll survive with our meagre winter weather gear!

 

El Calafate is a nice town and we're staying in a comfy hostel. We haven't managed to get into the whole South American "eat dinner at 10pm" routine, and are famished now so are heading out for (proably) another steak.

 

Bye!

 

A prior engagement

Hello again! We´re in Argentina now, having come over the border on the bus from Pucon on Wednesday. It was a beautiful journey across the Andes, beside clear blue lakes and under towering volcanoes. We had brief stops in a couple of picture-perfect mountain villages complete with chocolate shops - you could almost believe we were in Switzerland.

 

We've spent the last couple of days in a lively town called Bariloche. Its in a gorgeous setting, and yesterday we went on a lovely boat trip around the lake, visiting a couple of islands. The scenery is quite reminiscent of New Zealand, which I guess isn't surprising given that NZ and South America used to be joined together in a super-contintent called Gondwanaland a few hundred million years ago. All those museums trips didn't go to waste after all!

 

We're staying in a nice hostel that overlooks the lake. On our first night here we were put in a pretty basic room with no view and a dodgy bathroom, but the next morning we upgraded to a lovely room with great views and a flat screen TV - 3 quid well spent! Last night we went out for our first Argentinian steak. I ordered half a fillet, which turned out to be a good idea as it was pretty huge (and needless to say delicious!).

 

Today we went on a great white-water rafting trip on the Manso River. The scenery was stunning and the rapids were pretty wild - June and I got thrown in at one point! The last time we went rafting we got engaged, but nothing so life-changing happened this time. We did cross the border back into Chile though, which is the first time we´ve crossed an international border in an inflatable!

 

We bought a CD with some photos of the rafting which we'll upload when we get a chance, but in the meantime we´ve added a few photos to the Argentina set.

 

Bye!

 

Not another volcano!

Villarrica Volcano above Pucon
Originally uploaded by mark&june

Hi everyone. We're having a very relaxing time in Pucon in the Chilean lake district. Its a nice town nestling on the shores of a lake, and dominated by the Villarrica volcano sitting above it.

You can do a hike up the volcano, but in the end we decided against it - there are only so many volcanoes you can climb on a holiday! Plus my ankle still isn't right, so we've decided just to take it easy instead. There are lots of cafes and restaurants in town, so we've been kicking back and relaxing. The town has a bit of a European alpine feel about it - it's certainly very different to both Santiago and San Pedro.

Tomorrow we say au revoir to Chile and take a bus across the Andes to Bariloche in Argentina. Again its supposed to be a nice lakeside town, and maybe we'll be up for a bit more exertion there.

On Saturday we're flying down to El Calafate in Patagonia, to start exploring the glaciers and national parks down there. Hopefully the weather will be ok - we're heading into Autumn here, and the further south we go the colder it will get. So far so good though - the weather has been gorgeous, although its been a bit cloudy for the last couple of days.

Better go now as the letters have all been rubbed off this keyboard, which makes typing a bit of a struggle! Hope all is well with you all.

200 days gone, 47 to go.........

Last night I dreamt of San Pedro.....

Hello from the Atacama Desert, the highest and driest desert in the world!

We've had a really good three days up here, although we're finding the conditions a bit tough. San Pedro de Atacama is about 2200m above sea level, and for the last two days we've been on trips above 4000m, and have been suffering from altitude sickness a bit. It hasn't amounted to much more than headaches and tiredness, and has probably been accentuated by the fact that we had to get up at 3.30 this morning so that we could see some geysers before the sun came up. Apparently the geysers are at their gushiest just before sunrise - which is a shame, as at 4000m in a desert at 6am it's bloody cold! So much so that the water running away from the geysers was freezing on the ground...

San Pedro itself is a gorgeous little town. Its just as you´d imagine South America - dusty streets, mud-brick buildings, locals lying in the shade. Its a world away from Santiago and a great place to relax.

The Atacama desert is stunning. Its a mixture of lava fields and salt-lakes, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. It seems that everywhere you look there are volcanoes - some smoking, some dormant, some extinct. I expected the Andes to be more jungle-clad than volcanic - no doubt they are in other places. We met a Chilean girl yesterday who was going for an interview to work on the new James Bond movie which is going to be filmed here, so it will be interesting to see if we spot anywhere!

We've taken lots of gorgeous photos, but the internet is really slow here so hopefully we'll be able to upload them when we head south.

Hope you all have a great Easter weekend, and speak to you again soon!

Heading to the desert

Hello again.

 

It´s Tuesday morning now and we're about to head off to the airport to fly up to San Pedro de Atacama for a few days in the desert. Apparently there are lots of beautiful things to see up there, although one of them involves a 4am start to see the sunrise. I'm only just falling asleep by 4am some days!

 

We´ve had a great few days in Santiago. Once we'd got acclimatised we really liked the place, and found some cool areas away from the hustle and bustle of the centre. We found a great restaurant last night called ¨Las Vacas Gordas¨ (The Fat Cows), which is what we felt like after the meal! Food and drink is pretty cheap here (although not as cheap as in Asia), and the people are generally friendly. Its really surprising how few of them speak any English though - we´ve had to resort to sign-language and Google Translator when our vocabulary has failed us!

 

We´ve changed our plans for next week a bit. When we fly back to Santiago on Saturday we're not going to stay in town but instead will catch an overnight bus down to Pucon in the Lake District. The last time we went on an overnight bus was from Hanoi to Hue - about 190 days ago!

 

Hope you´re all doing well and thanks for still reading this!

 

Like a Thief in the Night

Evening all.

 

We´ve had a good couple of days in Santiago so far. It´s a very lively city filled with lots of beautiful people and great architecture. This afternoon we went up a gondola to the top of the Cerro San Cristobal, the tallest hill in town. The views were great and we could just about make out the Andes in the distance, although the smog did its best to hide them. After that we went for a nice meal in the Bellavista area, and were surprised to find them celebrating St Patrick´s day!

 

We´ve sketched out our plans for the next few days. On Tuesday we´re flying north to San Pedro de Atacama for a few days in the desert - its supposed to be really beautiful up there. Then on Saturday we fly back to Santiago, and probably on Easter Monday we´ll take a bus south to the Lake District, and then more buses across the Andes and down through Argentina towards Patagonia. Its subject to change, but at least we have a vague idea of what we´re doing now!

 

As expected things have been a bit harder work here than in NZ. People don´t tend to speak much English so we´ve been trying our best to get by in Spanish - so far so good. We were warned that crime might be a problem, and sure enough I discovered someone opening my bag last evening - it was on my back at the time! The incident has made us a bit nervous, but was probably a good thing so that we are a bit more careful from now on. June has been advised not to wear any jewellery, so unfortunately that opal ring is going to be under wraps for a couple of months.

 

I guess we´d better head to bed soon to try and get over the jet lag - we´ve had two very disrupted nights so far. Not feeling 100% comfortable at the moment, but looking forward to what´s ahead.....

 

Chilling in Chile

Hi everyone. Just a quick note to let you know we´ve crossed the Pacific successfully.

 

By the time midnight arrives March 13th will have lasted 40 hours, but I´ve got a feeling we´re not going to last that long - it´s 8.30pm now and we´re pretty much on our last legs!

 

The flight over was good and we managed to get a couple of hours sleep. We watched two movies on the plane - Enchanted and The Martian Child - both were good but the details are a bit blurry in my mind now!

 

From first impressions Santiago seem like a cool place. There are lots of wide open plazas and impressive churches, and thousands of Chileans happily promenading back and forth. It feels quite European, except without the tourists - we barely came across any on our wanders. June has been brushing up on her Spanish and is doing very well, including asking for some ice when I fell off a curb and twisted my ankle! How come I can jump out of a plane OK, but find it difficult to cross the road?!

 

We´re heading to the tourist office tomorrow to get some ideas about how to plan our trip. The problem with Chile is that it´s so long and thin, so if we want to see both ends there´ll be a lot of doubling back on ourselves, and the distances are pretty enormous. We´ve been so busy in NZ that we haven´t had a chance to plan anything for this leg of the journey, but judging by the way we´re feeling now we may take a more relaxed approach to the next 2 months, and move at a leisurely Latin pace.

 

Sweet as

Well, we've just about come to the end of our time in New Zealand.  

 

As you can probably tell we've had a wonderful couple of months here. The country has been even more beautiful than we expected, and there has been so much do see and do. I'll never forget my bungy-jumping and sky-diving, but there have been so many other highlights - swimming with dolphins, flying over glaciers, spotting penguins, seals and sealions, cruising the fjords, climbing a volcano.....the list goes on and on. We can really understand why people would want to emigrate here - it has the feel of being at home in the UK, but with much more beautiful scenery, far fewer people and (in the summer at least) better weather. We've no plans to emigrate (bit too far away from all our friends and family) but we'll definitely be back!

 

 

We've had a nice few days in Auckland. It's a bit like a smaller scale Sydney, sitting beside a beautiful harbour and populated with lots of Asians! One difference though is that it's built on an active volcano zone - in face there are 42 volcanoes in the city! We visitied the museum today and went to a pretty scary exhibit on what might happen if one of them blew - after watching that I'm pretty glad we're about to head off!

 

 

Tomorrow we fly to Santiago, Chile, on what will be the longest day of our lives. There's a 16 hour time difference between Chile and NZ, so we will arrive in Santiago 5 hours before we leave Auckland! I've always fancied a bit of time travel.....

 

Ships that pass in the night

Meeting up with Marina, Mark, Caroline and John
Originally uploaded by mark&june

Hello from Auckland!

Those of you from NU/L&E may remember Marina James, who used to work (and ski!) with us. She and her husband Mark, and his brother John and (very soon to be) wife Caroline arrived in NZ yesterday to celebrate John's birthday, watch the cricket, and attend John and Caroline's wedding in Wellington!

Luckily we had a couple of hours overlap with them in Auckland, and we met up for some drinks underneath the Sky Tower. It was great to see them and they did very well to keep their eyes open considering they were severely jet-lagged! Actually Marina was her usual bubbly self, but John and Mark were clearly struggling!

We had a good last couple of days up north. The sun continued to shine and our visit to Waitingi was really interesting. Although there continue to be issues to this day with how the Treaty has been interpreted (especially around land rights), it seems to have been written with the right intentions, and its aim of "one land, one people" was a noble one.

Quick update re the backpacker room we had in the Bay of Islands - unfortunately we didn't have it to ourselves, as three Brazilian girls turned up to share with us at 10.30pm. As you can imagine I was most put out!

We've got a few days in Auckland before we head off to South America on Thursday. We'd better head out now and explore the big city. Bye for now!


PS We've uploaded the photos for the last few days, starting here.

Always Take The Weather With You...

It's amazing how much the weather can affect your enjoyment of a holiday.

We were both feeling a bit glum after 3 or 4 cloudy days, but our mood has brightened along with the sunshine now that we've headed up to Northland.

Yesterday we had a nice time snorkelling amongst the marine life at Goat Island, although the sea was a bit on the chilly side! Luckily we were persuaded to hire wet-suits, which made it a lot more pleasant.

Today we drove up to the Bay of Islands, which, as the name suggests, is a bay of.....islands! There are about 150 islands, and we went on a lovely cruise round some of them this afternoon. It was a hot sunny day and the sea had lots of gorgeous colours. We ended the day watching the sun go down while having a nice meal in Russell, before catching a ferry back to our backpackers.

We've been pretty impressed with the standard of the backpackers out here - they are generally a lot less "youth" oriented than the ones we stayed in in Oz. Tonight we've hit the jackpot and found a 2 bedroom place with kitchen, bathroom & TV etc for £34. There was a chance that
some other people could be staying in the other bedroom, but its 9pm now so I think we're safe! We've probably split our nights 50 /50 between backpackers and motels/hotels, which has kept us (more or less) sane!

Tomorrow we're visiting Waitangi, which is where the original Treaty between the British and the Maoris was signed, and then pn Sunday we head down to Auckland.

Haven't been able to upload any photos for a while but hopefully will soon. Bye!

The beginning of the end

Hi everyone!

 

We've spent the last few days pottering around the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel Peninsula and have been having a nice relaxing time. The weather has been a bit dodgy so we haven't been able to enjoy the beautiful beaches as much as we'd have liked, although at least it was sunny on the day we visited Hobbiton, which was really pretty.

 

One of the places we'd been recommended to visit was the Hot Water Beach, which is a beach where if you dig a pool for yourself at low tide it gets filled by a natural spring of hot water, and you can happily lie back and relax as if you're in a bath. Unfortunately it was really rainy and windy when we were there, and even though it was low tide the waves still came crashing in and quickly filled in any holes we tried to dig! In the end we gave up with the shovels and just wiggled our feet below the sand, and sure enough it was pretty hot under there!

 

We're heading up towards the far north and the Bay of Islands this afternoon. We've got four days up there before we head down to Auckland on Sunday, and then after that we'll be off to South America, the last leg of our journey!