We had some great weather in Sydney, which made it pretty much a perfect long weekend. With 3 days to explore we hit the streets, starting at the harbour bridge and the opera house at sunset. Next day we drifted around Darling harbour, sauntered around the shops and even breezed through the Bday bash of Buddha himself, all under beautiful bright blue skies. Next day we walked around Bondi beach for some relaxation (cos life just gets SO stressful sometimes), wat...

We started our tour of the south island where the inter island ferry left us in Picton, a cute little port town. We had some great fish and chips but didn't spend long here as we were heading to Christchurch to meet Chris and Diana, friends we met in Bolivia. It was great to see them again and swap travel stories, and of course reminisce on the Bolivia mountain experience where we last saw them. Thankfully, Christchurch is pretty flat so there was no need to re...

We had an inkling before we arrived, but the fact of the matter is: New Zealand is not in South America. Slightly unfairly perhaps, we held this fact against the City of Auckland upon our arrival. It was slightly colder than we had got used to, but, worse still for us, the airport, street signs (same colour, font and of course language), bus and general ambience had the whiff and efficiency of Stansted airport about it. Surely we don't need to explain the connota...

From Ushuaia we flew to BA again, and took a bus to our last stop in Argentina, Mendoza, wine country! Hurrah (hic)! We spent 2 great days tasting the different varieties and finished off with an amazing 5 course lunch amongst the vines at the Ruca Malen vineyard… all the courses were paired with wines too, so it was perfect. On our first day we stayed in town, which is generally pleasant enough with tree lined streets and nice sunny parks. Refreshed and ea...

Not so fresh from our overnight (22 hour) trip to Bariloche from BA, we headed to our hostel, which was just out of town but very good. The Greenhouse hostel in Bariloche is one of our favourites, it’s the way hostels should be… the manager, Tomas, really wanted everyone to have a brilliant time and it showed. We also got a great room with a great view, so we stayed for a week. Bariloche is the gateway to Argentinian Patagonia, and the capital of the lakes d...