We arrived in La Serena after just a short 6 hour bus journey from Santiago, it was a really cute town by the sea and was used for hoidays by the locals. We checked into a hostel right in the centre, A lovely lady answered the door who didnt speak a word of english, so our rather sketchy spanish was put to the test! We even managed to barter for the room and get it cheaper! After dumping our bags in the room (they seemed a lot heavier after a month of not carryin...

We landed in Santiago 4 hours ealier than we had left NZ on the same day so the first day was spent in a bit of blur of wandering around the city and catching up on sleep we had lost somewhere along the way! After some reservations we set out the next morning on a free walking tour of the city, It actually turned out to be pretty good and we spent 4 hours learning about Chile and the best things to get up to while we were there!The city was really cool, all the c...

On our way back down to Auckland we stopped off on the way at North Harbour rugby stadium for the first super 14 rugby game of the season between the blues and the hurricanes (Auckland v Wellington)! We had really good seats and the atmosphere was amazing as the hurricanes beat the blues in their first game at home!We headed to Erics apartment in the city centre where we all went for dinner and ice cream to catch up! After our food had settled we then headed to t...

After a night in a service station on our way up North we arrived at Whangerei where there was apparently one of the most spectacular waterfalls in NZ....It didnt let us down so within minutes we'd changed and were swimming in the pool at the bottom of the falls! After climbing our way up the path to the top Rich was quick to spot a rope swing into the river at the top of the falls and was soon joining in with the local mauoris seeing how high he could swing! He ...

We headed for Waitomo, a place famous for its glow worms and caving. So on our first night we decided to grab the torch and walk into the forest to see the glow worm spectical...Within 10 meters Rich was adament that a cat was watching us from a tree upabove, then Shelly started thinking about the film 'The Decent'. Its a good job the glow worms were awesome, they were tiny and in some places there were hundreds of them, because otherwise between shelly freaking ...