Valdivia & Panguipulli Tuesday 6th June - Wednesday 7th June What a god awful day! Rain like you haven't seen in the UK since last week (probably). Valdivia has two rivers running through the town (apparently) but we can't really appreciate them as it's just so miserable. Still we try to make the best of a bad situation and have a wander around town whilst getting soaked. We sort out changing over some travelers cheques in one of the dodgiest establi...

Puerto Montt & Chiloe Friday 2nd June - 5th June 2006 During our flight down to Puerto Montt we see numerous cloud-piercing volcanoes and the Andes are certainly a lot bigger than we had enviseaged. For some silly reason I thought that there would be just a single line of mountains running all the way down seperating Chile from Argentina. Not so, the mountain ranges stretched as far as the eye could see from the plane. All the volcanoes we could see ...

Santiago 30th May - 2nd June 2006 We arrive after a long flight in which somehow we leave 5 hours before we arrive?? So we truly are time travelers after all!! Lan Chile get less than full marks for their service on the flight over but at least neither of us has DVT when we arrive. However, we did get the last two leg room seats so it could have been worse. We arrive in Santiago and the infamous smog is pretty bad. We fumble our way into a taxi...

We spend the next couple of days seeing the delights of Rotorua which include the Buried Village, Lake Rotorua and the Green and Blue Lakes, Te Puia (another thermal area, but with the famous Pohutu Geyser which is huge) and a Maori evening of entertainment and a hangi (a Maori meal cooked in the ground using hot rocks), which was very tasty. On our way north from Rotorua we also gave Zorbing a go which was great fun. For those of you that don't know, Zorbi...

Got up nice and early to catch our ferry back to the North Island only to receive a text that it had been cancelled due to bad weather. After much to-ing and fro-ing we ended up booked on another ferry for later in the day. Unfortunately that ferry left three hours late and was probably the worst crossing I've ever experienced. Fortunately sea-sickness was kept at bay with Amy's newly discovered remedy - Ginger tables (recommended for anyone who suffers from m...