Thursday 20th November

Hi everyone. Sorry so long since we kept this up, we've been pretty much on the move and found internet access hard at times, so we'll just do a quick summary of the last week.

Tues 11th November
Macchu Pichu!! And everything you've heard is true. The setting is just indescribably beautiful. As for the site ...take the roofs off a Cotswold village, say Stow-on-the Wold, then surround it by 16,000 feet mountains, and you might get an idea. We saw chinchillas there too. It was a hard day, but the train journey was quite an experience, starting at 6am with zigzags up out of Cusco, then across the altiplano as all the villages were beginning the day, down through incredibly narrow gorges to the jungle. Nearly died on the bustrip up to Machu...well felt like it. Not for the fainthearted! The trip back not so much fun, largely in the dark, but enlivened by a fashion show put on by the carriage crew showing "quality alpaca products", most bizarre!

Wed 12th November
Shopping in Cusco and a last look around before we had to say goodbye, it was hard to leave. We flew to Lima then straight on to Santiago, arriving there just before midnight. Rebecca, think Hotel Moskva for our hotel! Very 70's. Our first impression of Santiago was like Birmingham - very messy, first litter we'd seen in S. America. Turned out they'd had a public service strike and rubbish hadn't been collected for a while. Next day they were clearing up and it was tidy again. (Bet Birmingham isn't)

Thursday 13th November
Big recommendation for anyone going to Chile - A) do - it's beautiful, b)if you only have one day go on a private tour with John Gottlieb. He is big mates with the head of the Cilean army so you should be safe!! Chile is more western-feeling that Peru & Ecuador. We had a greatr trip to Valparaiso, gorgeous town, plus wine-tasting and a few other side-trips as well. John insisted on taking us to the airport and took us up to see the sunset over Santiago first, it's a stunning city. He then got us priority boarding on the plane so we were first on! It was goodbye to the Andes then, they had been with us all the way for the last week and ...well, you just have to see them for yourselves. Hard to imagine anywhere more beautiful.

Friday 14th November
Nothing happened! We didn't get this day!!

Saturday 15th November
Arrived 4am in NZ after a typically awful night flight. (LAN a very good airline, just being in the dark for nearly 10 hours was vile.) Met by Sarah, who in 1981 was Sarah Lloyd and in my class in St Anne's. And thank goodness she was, she's grwon up to be a lovely wife and mum - as well as doing a compicated admin job in a primary school in Northshore Auckland). She and her husband Mike & daughter Catherine gave us a great weekend, variously providing travel, hotel, laundry, computer and anti- jetlag services, as well as answering an endless stream of questions.
One jetlag cure is apparently helping to move neighbours into their new house. We worked all morning shifting furniture in return for beer and bacon and egg pie It was great fun and What A house!! Then onto long beach and the busmans holiday visiting Sarah's school where Some staff also work on Saturdays doing reports!!

Sunday 16th Nov
Touring Auckland. Takepuna market, Devonport, wonderful harbour views. The spot where nothing happened in 1897 which is commemorated by a plaque. Lunch in a fine pub then the ferry to Auckland harbour to look at the amazing millionaires yachts.

Monday 17th Nov.
Pick up our camper, Sarah driving us back all the way to the airport. We then drove north in dull weather along a road with more roadworks than Kidderminster, but we reached Paihia which is beautiful and a great compensation. Like West coast scotland or Cornwall but usually warmer.
Stunning beachside campsite.

Tuesday 18th.
The thrill of NZ so far. Off at 7:00am in a 4wd coach to the northern tip of NZ. Morning coffee was taken in a place carving 50,000 year old trees into beautiful stuff. Thank heavens we could not carry it home let alone afford it. A $32,000 Mandoline!! Next came 90 mile beach. Driven at at 110 KPH by our "keen" coach diver who also sang Moari songs and laments. The other coach gave up as the tide was rising early driven by a storm the previous night, But not our man! this is despite the fact that few on the coach were under 60. We ploughed through the surf passing the last escape point until we turned and drove up a river bed at the end of the beach. We then stopped to sandboard down some huge 100ft. plus dunes (including the oldies). Exhilarating!!
We then drove to Cape Reinga and watched where the Pacific meets the Tasman sea with no Eastern landfall for 13,000 miles. Just for an encore we then went to one of the oldest forests in NZ at Puketi to walk aroung the boardwalk built for the Queen which she refused to use. This forest is of Kauri trees (the same as the ones at the morning stop but younger) , and they are massive.

Wednesday 19th Nov.
A glorious morning and off on a high speed catamaran to watch dolphins. And we did. Two pods that swam all around us. We also passed the boat through a natural rock arch barely wider than the boat. In the afternoon after lunch in the oldest colonial pub in NZ, in the town of Russell we visited the Waitangi Treaty grounds where the Maori signed a treaty with the British in 1840, a very beautiful place.

Feeling tired now heading off south of Auckland. Rotorua to morrow.