I would love to tell you that I fully appreciated visiting Chile, but the truth of the matter was that I was well and truly 'touristed out'. I had booked my first 5 nights in a nice hotel in Santiago knowing that after my full on touring itinerary I would need to relax. That left me with a further 5 nights to maybe travel further afield. Hmmmm.... so what actually happened was after 2 nights at the hotel I booked an extra 5 nights!!

Santiago Zoo was within walking distance of my hotel so I did spend a, quite honestly, rather depressing few hours there. Having been so spoilt and privileged with the wildlife I have already seen in its natural habitat, it was awful to see sea lions in a tiny dirty pool and condors in a cage. I have been to good zoos but this really wasn't one of them. Santiago itself is a lovely city, and I did a lot of walking along the park areas edging the river to get into the centre.

For a couple of the days I was there I met up with Alice, one of the girls I became friends with on my tour of South America. We did the obligatory hop on/off bus tour (Alice likes those!). I did take a few photos, but is it bad that I got most excited when I saw a cinema that I could walk to from my hotel??? Suffice to say the rest of the week was spent by the pool or in the cinema. My fantastic few months in Central/South America were coming to an end and I was now off to New Zealand and Australia.

I think the New Zealand passport officer was surpised when I said 'gracias' when he gave me my passport back. Well it was 4 in the morning and my brain had been in spanish mode for a very long time. My mumbled 'ummm that was wrong wasn't it?' did make him laugh though. A quick overnight in Auckland, then on to Christchurch to be met by my lovely cousin Jane. For onlookers we were the couple of people hugging that had big grins on our faces and tears in our eyes.

Jane and her hubby Mark emigrated 4 years ago and live in Ashburton on the South Island. It was great being in a normal house and having fab home cooking, and of course having a nice cup of PG Tips tea! They had both taken 2 weeks off, but I had a few days exploring on my own beforehand. I am not exactly planning to emigrate, but I did get quite excited when I found a hockey pitch AND a cinema in Ashburton.

By Sunday we were ready to set off on our tiki tour (this is actually in the dictionary and means 'a scenic tour of an area' only in NZ!). We headed down to Dunedin, stopping off in Oamaru which had a nice victorian area and is the Steampunk capital of NZ. Bit difficult to describe so probably best to google it but there are lots of weird contraptions and the clothes look a bit like they are out of Mad Max. Further on were the Moeraki Boulders, huge spheres of rock deposited on the beach which looked quite surreal. We stayed for a couple of nights on the Otago Peninsula, doing some lovely walks and spotting some seals - or what New Zealanders call seals but we call sea lions !?!

A quick stop at Baldwin Street to walk up the worlds steepest road, then on to the nicely named Kaka Point for lunch. We were brits, we had packed a picnic so yes we did sit at the picnic bench in the bitterly cold wind wearing shorts.... On to the Catlins for another couple of nights and some fantastic scenery - waterfalls, caves, beaches, petrified trees and not forgetting getting eaten alive by sand flies, nice. Oh also cheesy photos at NZ's most southerly tip, Slope Point.

A quick overnighter in Invercargill should have been uneventful had there not been a horrible rattling noise from under the bonnet and the temperature gauge going through the roof! We were so lucky this happened within walking distance of a garage, and after some mumblings of 'head gasket gone', a new water pump thankfully solved it. Onwards to Te Anau in Fiordland.

Two great days followed. First was Doubtful Sound, a huge fiord only accessible via a cruise across Lake Manapouri then going over the Wilmot Wilmot Pass road. Once there we were the only boat in the whole fiord and it really was an incredible sight. We stopped in one of the fiord arms, and the captain turned the engines and generators off. After a couple of minutes, complete silence descended, and the sound of birdsong and insects flooded our senses. The water calmed and became like a mirror, truly beautiful. Day 2 was a trip to Milford Sound, we had picked a small tour company for this and our guide for the day was a local called Ray. I got quite excited as he told us to look for the wild pigs coming up on the side of the road - oh hang on, my mistake, he actually said white pegs! Now New Zealanders might think they speak english, but boy do they jumble up their vowels. Milford is much smaller than Doubtful but dramatic in a different way, and I saw this from an amazing view point as I took a helicopter flight up to the glacier swooping within feet of the mountain tops. Sandals in snow are not the best footwear, but frost bitten toes were worth it!

We then took a few days to travel back across the country travelling through Queenstown, Arrowtown, Lake Wanaka and Lake Tekapo. A great couple of weeks with my favourite people.

'Nixt' I had a little tour of my own. I took the Tranz Alpine train across to the West Coast, and drove down to the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers. I did a day hike on Fox Glacier, which was my first experience of crampons. It was quite hard work as you have to kind of stomp as you walk to ensure the crampons grip the ice. The guide walked ahead with a pick axe cutting steps as we went, exploring the ice pinnacles and seracs. A fab day, but boy were my knees shot by the time we were coming back down....

Back across to Ashburton, and a day trip to Christchurch, a city still recovering from the earthquake 2 years ago which killed so many people. It was a humbling day. We walked around the edge of the red zone, an area still off limits but gradually getting smaller as buildings are either ripped down or being rebuilt. In the middle of the devastation there is a small green area with 185 empty white chairs of all shapes and sizes, representing the 185 lives lost, it brought a lump to the throat. A mall has been creatively formed out of shipping containers, to try to attract people back to the centre and looked really cool.

I am off to Oz today but I have had a fantastic few weeks here, and I'm already threatening to come back. It's a little bit of home from home.