Arrived in Auckland on Tuesday. Should have been Monday but due to our crossing of the date line we lost a day. Pretty good though as we managed not to spend a single penny of our daily budget! Now that we are back to civilisation, we are catching up on chores and Lisa is of course shopping. That days money saving was gone within 2 hours of getting into town. Her definitions of 'want' and 'need' seem to be pretty much the same thing, or maybe I am just a tig...

Flew from Tahiti to Rarotonga, the largest (but still tiny) island of the Cook Islands. We had promised ourselves that we would do our PADI open water diving course here. Anyone wanting to dive needs to complete this before being let loose in the water on dives around the world. We had expected a quick video and off you go. Not so. 4 full days, homework at night and numerous tests before a final exam. What happened to our swinging in hammocks under palm tree...

Hopping across the islands of the South Pacific, we flew from Easter Island to Tahiti. After spending the night on the airport floor with all the other penniless backpackers, we spent about an hour on Tahiti (overrated and more importantly horrendously expensive) and took a boat to another of the islands in the group, Moorea. Had decided where we wanted to stay, and once off the boat took a ride on 'le truck' round the island. Le truck is the islands bu...

From Lima we travelled to Santiago, the capital of Chile. Got to the place we had booked at the crack of dawn. After banging on the door for 5 minutes we were let in and shown to our room by this really odd Chilean guy wearing just a pair of boxer shorts and a pair of obviously odd socks. The room wasnt any better and Lisa was appalled by the facilities. So, after an arguement over the state of the place (the guy was mortified that we thought that this s*** ...

Here in Lima, in darkest Peru and home of Paddington Bear. Closest sighting was a tramp with a PB book. Will keep looking. Arrived on Saturday, having heard nothing but negative reports about the place. Good in a way because it has been a real surprise. Plenty of dodgy characters around wanting to separate you from your posessions and security guards with guns on the doorway of all hotels and even the smallest of shops remind you that there are a few crims o...