This was our first taste of bus travel in Chile and the Tur Bus bus to Valparaiso was really excellent - on time and very comfortable. However, for a while we were worried that we might be on the wrong bus because they seem to be quite precise about bus time, stance etc and there was a lot of chopping and changing of seats and putting people off the bus at the first couple of stops. However, it did seem to be efficient and gave us some confidence for our future j...

We are now on the other side of time and sitting at 2000ft among towering snow clad Andean mountains. Having been ahead of UK time since we set out on our journey 2 years ago, and as far ahead as any country can be, we are now 5 hours behind UK time. It is extremely strange, on our first flight over the International Dateline, to have made such a change and even a few hours into Santiago we are having great difficulty adapting to the mystery of chronology.Santiag...

This is really a blog for weeks 6, 7, 8 & 9 in Auckland - because there is not too much to report. Well it's a wee while since we last wrote our blog but we haven't really been up to much, just living a kinda normal day to day life - oh how we long to be on the road and to being real travellers again!To that end we've been spending quite a bit of time planning our journey around South America.And one big step forward was getting the car sold!With the bottom...

John & Deb landed safely and we arranged to meet at our motel. Strangely for world travellers, they took some considerable time to wend their way from Mount Eden to Parnell although they seemed to be able to conjure up a whole batch of excuses for being late - Deb's son's car was peculiar, the windscreen wipers weren't that good in the rain, the car needed petrol, etc!! But seriously it was good to see them and we went down the road for our first visit to St ...

We had tickets for Wednesday evening's performance of the NZ Ballet Company's modernized version of Romeo and Juliet. It was a bit of a rush getting back to Auckland and settling back into our room at the motel so we only had time for a quick bite before rushing out again - in the same scruffy walking trousers and tops we'd had on all day - and which were now a bit mud spattered after traipsing round Zion Park. We did get a few sidelong looks from those of the ...