After a seven hour bus ride from Valparaiso we arrive in La Serena and make straight for the hostel. We check into a private room with a view to getting some undisturbed shut eye in an attempt to cure our jetlag. We take a walk around La Serena and book onto a tour of the Elqui valley for the following day. We take some lunch at a local restaurant advised by the tour operator and are pleasantly surprised to find lots of pensioners in for lunch too. Must be good ...

We arrive into Valparaiso after a short bus ride from Santiago and head for the harbour thinking that is where all the action will be and it's kind of en route to our hostel. We're greeted with stacks of faded and rusting shipping containers stacked up blocking any view of the sea. A little bit miffed by this we continue on to the hostel. We're on the right lines but a little lost when a lovelly old gentleman asks us where we're going in Spanish and we show him...

We arrive at Auckland airport and check-in. Our flight is delayed a few hours due to a technical problem. So we set about doing the usual things to kill time in an airport. Later on the flight delay is extended now instead of flying at 16:00 we're due to fly at 01:00 the next day. Oh b*****. The entertainment in the terminal is Corrie. Double bubble! I do some rough calculations and realise we will land, all be it just a few hours, the day before we took off. Cr...

Working our way North to Rotorua on the thermal highway we stop at a campsite that happened to has a thermal spring running through it. The lady at the gate tells us it's really nice in the evening with 2 bathing spots: one at 36C and the other at 32C. She didnt need to tell us twice! As soon as tents were up we were back in wet swimmers (still wet from kayaking) and armed with a box of tinnies headed to the stream. The first bathing spot seemed to have a naked...

Bright and early we arrive at The Sea Kayak company in Motueka to start our 3 day tour around Abel Tasman. We meet 4 fellow Sea Kayakers from America booked on the same tour as us and pack our things away into dry bags. Advised by our tour guide Dane we also ensure we have enough beer for the trip. We are loaded with gear and 5 sea kayaks onto a sea taxi and leaving no spare room for aything else head north for 45minutes. The swell has gotten up in exposed areas...