Ok, so we're safely back from our 3 day trek over the Routeburn track which starts in Fiordland National park and finishes in Mount Aspiring NP. We had three days of hot sunshine with storms either side of our trek. This meant that the waterfalls had been topped up but the ground was dry. The terrain is really tough going and consists of scrambling across, up and down huge boulders for most of the time. The 'steps' from one rock to the next are sometimes higher t...

Hello from Queenstown! We're staying in an airbandb about 20 mins out of the town on the beautiful Lake Hayes. It's the best of both worlds, close enough to the crazy fun and yet so peaceful. Our little 'cottage' is a tiny straw bale house in the garden of a larger property which is also straw bale. It also has a living roof (not a typo for living room ), beautiful sculpures around the garden created by the owner and lots of fantails and tuis flying around. We co...

We have finally arrived in New Zealand. The flight from London to Sydney was unique in our experience in as much as we had in excess of 17 hours of significant turbulence. It was bad enough most of the time for us to part company with the seat on a regular basis only to be reunited with it a few seconds later. The poor captain had to keep finding 5/10 minutes to switch the seat belt signs off and allow people to get to the loo! The flight from Sydney to Auckland ...

Hi everyone. We have resurrected the blog from our sabbatical and Paul's 60th ahead of our last ever trip downunder. Not that we won't keep travelling but the world holds many more places we have yet to visit and so we must focus on pastures new after this (except for Scotland, of course ). This is by way of a notification because the STA site has been moved over to this company. I've added a few people. Anyway, hope you enjoy revisiting places and exploring new...

Hello from Iguazu National Park where we are spending the last couple of nights before heading home. We have had a spectacular storm this morning and we sat in bed earlier watching the lightening over the waterfalls. We left the Sacred Valley and caught the Vistadome train to Machu Picchu. The journey was memorable and we met a fun gay couple from Sao Paulo on the train and spent a bit of time with them over the next two days. One was an English translator an...