Puerto Montt - 16th April 2009 After a non-remarkable bus ride, we arrive in a grotty bus station in a grotty port town... welcome to Puerto Montt! Undeterred, we tramp around for half an hour until we find a hostel, the best and cheapest choice being one with a bright green bathroom, complete with a bright blue bathroom suite, plus numerous frilly pillows on the bed. We dump our stuff and head off (via a trucker cafe, which we stumble on by mistake, but which i...

Valdivia - 15th April 2009 After an early start for our bus, we spend a slightly worried few minutes trying to track someone who works at the hostel down so that we can pay for our stay... we eventually manage to wake the owner's wife up, and are on our way. The bus ride to Valdivia is comfortable and short enough, and we have bravely not booked any accommodation at the other end. We decide to trust one of the touts at the station, who bats her eyelashes at us a...

Pucon 13th April 2009Pucon was an 11 hour bus ride south from Santiago and we had risked the Classico seats (the cheapest) to get an idea of the level of quality on this first Chile bus ride. Luckily for us, the seats were more comfortable than long haul flights and made even better by the conductor of the bus who politely put a cushion behind everyones heads and generally made sure we were all OK. The bus was nice and modern with a toilet at the back, and it wa...

Santiago 8th April 2009 We woke up this morning in Auckland knowing that today was going to be a very, very long day. After a late night yesterday finishing off our packing, we were up at 7am to try to work out how to convert the large pile of stuff that was left unpacked either into some useful cash, or to at least pass it onto someone who would be able to make use of it. Most stuff went onto the communal shelf in the hostel or was foisted upon some ´lucky...

Taupo, Waitomo and Auckland - 7th April 2009We arrived at Taupo driving down the side of the lake the size of Singapore and found a nice camp site a few km's from town. We had a few ideas of things that we would like to do while we were there but the tighter money situation had resulted in the delaying (or permanently cancelling) the Skydive I had planned, and only left enough cash in the budget for a boat cruise to see some Maori carvings and a Segway tour that ...