Valpariaso is only about an hour away from Santiago by bus, on the coast. This was our first taste of buses in South America and we were amazed at how comfortable it was. When we arrived it was only a short walk to our hostel, where we stayed for the next 3 nights. It was a cool hostel in a quiet residential street, run by a young couple. It had a good atmosphere, I think they must have been art students of something as there was a lot of quirky artwork around. T...

As we crossed the date line during our flight, we arrived in Santiago at around 1pm on 30th September - 5 hours before we left New Zealand. The flight was our longest yet at around 12 hours, but it was relatively easy as we spent most of the time watching films before getting a few hours sleep. We were a little tired when we arrived as it was 6am New Zealand time, but we had planned ahead and booked a transfer to the hostel. Our room wasn´t quite ready wh...

We stayed for Auckalnd for 2 nights before going to Coromandel and then for another 3 before leaving to Chile. We didn´t do too much to be honest so this will be a brief blog. I is just a big city, not unlike any other and we were preparing to move on to South Amercia. The first night we stayed in the worst hostel so far on our trip. This was full of annoying loud people who decided throw furniture around in the hallways in the night and put food all over the...

We stayed for five nights in Coromandel town. It was a two hour ferry ride over there from Auckland and then a bus dropped us off at our hostel. We pitched our tent in the hostel garden. This took some time as Alan was getting quite frustrated. Our tent was a bit rubbish in that the outer layer never seemed to sit properly and reach the ground on all four sides at the same time. We got it as best we could. The weather was a lot warmer as it is spring now in NZ, a...

We woke up at 7am to get breakfast and pack up our tent in time for the bus from Rotorua to the small village of Waitomo. The nice woman from the campsite offered to give us a lift to the station, which saved us a 15 minute walk with all our bags. The bus to Waitomo only took 2 hours and the bus driver even dropped us off at our hostel, saving us another walk. They're really helpful these NewZealanders . Once the light rain had stopped we went outside and pit...