Family in Far Away Places For the next leg of the journey I'm afraid I must wrench the blog out from under Dean's elegant touch and regale you instead with some stories in my own peasant style, as over the next 3 weeks we had the privilege of staying with some of my family, so it's only right that I should get to gush about them a bit at this point. I think Dean left us touching down in Auckland. Well, to give a little background ... there was a time when I wa...

Queenstown, New Zealand. 19/09/11 - 22/09/11 Our 7am flight from Auckland landed about an hour later at the smart and modern Queenstown airport nestled below the spectacular "Remarkables" mountain range. The bus into town passes by beautiful lakes that remind us of Bariloche. The similarities end there as Queenstown is full of modern low rise apartments painted an ugly grey, tour agencies, shops and bars. Our hostel, Pinewood Lodge, looks worryingly like a uni...