Tom: We are currently 2440m above sea-level, and admittedly a little light-headed! Took a 24hour bus journey between Santiago and a curious little oasis village in the middle of the Atacama desert, reportedly the driest desert on earth (if you trust the Top Gear boys - and of course, the Lonely Planet guide). So on top of the jetlag we still haven`t yet overcome, we are acclimatizing to high-altitudes. Not to worry, I reckon we`ll be about right tomorrow, as we`...

Tom: Crossing the International Date Line is more bizarre than we thought it would be. When we left Auckland on 23rd it was 5:oopm, and we touched down in Santiago, Chile at midday after an 11hour flight.This meant that it suddenly made perfect grammatical sense (well, loosely anyway) to make statements such as "this time today, we were leaving for Auckland airport". We made the stupid mistake of immediately going to bed, and we are now regretting it a...