New Zealand -Auckland and the North Island (Friday 5th - Friday 12th December) Early morning flight to NZ. We left Tahiti at 7.30 am Thursday but due to crossing the International Dateline on route we lost a day and arrived in Auckland lunchtime Friday. We are now 13 hours ahead of the UK. Apart from myself other major celebrities arriving in Auckland that weekend included David Beckham and Kylie Minogue. An old friend Simon was at the airport to meet us and whi...

Easter Island and Tahiti (Sun 30th - Wed 3rd Dec) 11 hour LAN flight from Santiago to Tahiti made more bearable by a short stopover on Easter Island where most of the passengers were heading. This was a pleasant surprise as we didn't even know we were going to Easter Island until just before the flight took off. We were allowed to disembark and spend an hour in the transit area waiting for the plane to refuel and take on a couple of new customers. Didn't get a c...

Santiago, Chile (Sunday 23rd - Sat 29th Nov) Arrived in Santiago Sunday pm after an early morning flight from Rio which included a stop in Sao Paulo to pick up more passengers.This flight was not part of our original itinerary so we had to cough up extra for this part of our journey. Like Argentina and Uruguay the currency is still the peso but we have gone from 5 argentine pesos to the pound to 10,000 chilean pesos to the pound. First impressions were not good...

Iguazu to Rio de Janeiro(Brazil)Wed 19th - Sat 22 Nov) Booked a very early morning taxi from our hostel and crossed the border into Brazil at 6.00 am. It only took 5 minutes to go through customs as we were the only candidates. It is a 22 hour bus journey to Rio. That may not be a problem for the young Lauras or Andrews of this world but we couldn't face that so we decided to break our journey by catching the 7.00 am bus to Curitiba which is roughly half way. 12...

Iguazu Falls (Mon 17th - Tues 18th Nov) The falls are in the north of Argentina on the border with Brazil. It's a 20 hour bus journey from Buenos Aires to the small town of Iguazu so we decided to treat ourselves by booking a 90 minute LAN Airline flight. We stayed for 2 nights in a large hostel with swimming pool about 30 minutes from the falls. The vast majority of the guests were young backpackers in their 20's so Gwen and I stuck out like a sore thumb. On o...