Hello again!

5 months in South America is now over and we have finally arrived in New Zealand, after much stress and uncertainty. I'll come back to that shortly. We were so pleased to arrive in NZ. Great to be understood and speak English again. Being in a city that doesn't smell! We actually walked around a supermarket for an hour just looking at all the things we missed and we bought a few treats as well! Auckland is great, lots of cool bars, shops and restaurants. We even had Wagamama for lunch one day! After some time in Auckland we went east to the Coromandel Peninsula. The weather has been perfect and this area is really beautiful. Tomorrow we fly to Christchurch and we are picking up our camper van!!!

I want to say that the last week in Brazil and in South America was great. We had the pleasure of having Mamma and Pappa Gustafsson on a visit. We got a reminder of how cold it must be back home when they arrived in winter jackets, shoes and pale like snow. But after a few days in the sun, they looked much healthier. We enjoyed a lot of good food in the evenings and mostly beach in the days. We did take them on a true "backpacker" excursion...we took the local bus to an old town called Olinda. The buss was a pain (was schedule to take 1h...but ended up taking 3hours!!) and I don't think they have had swedish tourist on it before.

After a week with the Gustafssons we were supposed to leave South America. I will try and explain the panic we experienced after finding out that we had been cancelled off the flight out from SA. To let you know the full story. There is only one plan a day out from SA and that flight is always fully booked. In fact it is solidly booked until mid March. We called the day before to confirm our seats and the time and found out that Lan's computer system had cancelled us off the flight, because we had missed our previous flight with them. They could easily book us in again for the flight Sao Paulo to Santiago. But the Santiago - Auckland flight was fully booked till 20th of March. Our Around the world trip, could now be "a VERY long South America trip" instead... We ended up with 3 options. 1. Stay in SA, most likely end up as hippies in Bolivia...living of 5 pounds a day and come out with dreads and playing the guitar. 2. Reroute our ticket and fly back up to the USA and out that way...not to sure of the costs... 3. Pay 2000 pounds to buy new flights, but still having to wait for a few weeks. None of them sounded very inviting...When we landed in Santiago, after travelling since 3.30am! We were told they could put us on the stand by list, but we realized quite soon that we never would get on the plan that way. Because they were paying people not to go on the flight, cause it was so heavily overbooked. Same story every day and always 20 people or so on stand by. So we went to an airport hotel and tried next night again. Same story, but we got to talk to the supervisor and they finally admitted it was their fault. They put us up in a 5 star hotel in Santiago with everything included and the she booked us in for the flight the night after. The following day we played tennis on the roof of the hotel had some sushi and got picked up at the hotel. Taken to the airport and checked in! We were so relived and happy after spending three nights in the airport check in area, it was great to just go through security!!! If anyone is going to Santiago airport, we know where the best bathroom is, cheapest bottled water, best value on quick food and we are on first name bases with the check in staff at Lan!!!!

Over and out