Thankfully we arrived into Quito the day before we joined up with the Galapagos trip, although we almost did get kicked off the plane in Lima! La Mariscal Sucre, home for the next two nights is renowned as being an "extremely dangerous" (as said by Lonely Planet). By the daytime its fine, we even quite liked the place, but when the sun sets its pretty grim. There were gangs hanging around the hotel, the streets are pretty empty and every now and then yo...

Well we have firmly left the comfort of the english speaking world and are armed and dangerous with our latin american spanish phrasebook and buckets full of optimism! It cannot possibly be so hard to get around without knowing the language, or can it? For the first time on our entire trip the transportation was on time! We were a little dubious about flying with a chilean airline after horror stories of Aerolineas Argentina, but it has been one of the better f...

Two nights turned into three as we found ourselves loving the five star camping experience. By now I must have rode the waterslide about 20 times and we´ve probably spent about 6 hours in the jacuzzi but we feel pretty good for it. On our last day here we hired bodyboards and took to the waves, still amazed that the autumn weather is holding out for us. Anyway, after being assaulted by the freezing waves of the Pacific Ocean (a first for both of us) we retre...

We'd planned to spend around a week in Northland, that was never going to be possible, there simply aren't enough things to see. The idea of heading to Cape Reinga at the northernmost part of the country in dreary weather really didnt appeal to us! We'd left central North Island a few days earlier without really doing it justice and rather than being grumpy about it in the rain we decided to set off back down and put it right. It was a 6hr drive back to Rotorua ...

A place that constantly smells of rotten eggs isn't everyones idea of a great location but Rotorua is New Zealand's biggest tourist attraction. The smell definitely lives up to its reputation and as soon as we stepped out of the car it became obvious that we weren't likely to stand the smell in a tent so we chickened out and got a cheap cabin instead. Rotorua is much like Queenstown in that all the sights and attractions come with a hefty price tag and our bigges...