Took the short flight from Wellington to Christchurch and were picked up at the airport by the guy from the hire car company who informed us we had just missed another big aftershock from the earthquake that had caused so much damage in Christchurch. It was the same level on the richter scale as the recent quake in Haiti and it's amazing noone was hurt, we didn't pass through the city but having looked at some photos it really was lucky. We picked up our camperv...

Having been royally looked after in Auckland we were lucky enough to receive more amazing hospitality from Jon (another friend from back home) his wife Lucy and their sons Patrick and Jack who welcomed us into their home. They were equally good tour guides as well, taking us to Te Papa (the museum of New Zealand) and a wander along the harbour, a drive out to coast to look over the Cook Strait, visiting the viewing point by the wind turbine as well as pointing ou...

A cup of proper English tea and a slice of toast. Heaven. Mickey and Susie our friends from home who are living in Auckland put us up in there lovely house in Waitakere, complete with a clean bed, an en suite bathroom and supply of cheese and pickle sandwiches. Lovely jubbly. It was so great to be with friends who know us and not have to explain where we've been, where we're from and whether we can speak Spanish or not. We explored the beautiful surroundings of A...

A beautiful 5 hour bus journey through the Andes left us feeling a little bit sad that we were leaving South America and as we'd not heard great things about Santiago we weren't massively looking forward to it, seeing it as more of just somewhere we had to stay before getting our flight to New Zealand. Low expectations are sometimes a brilliant thing though; Santiago is a great city. As soon as we got off the metro with all our bags (there are a few more now as w...

This was intended to be our last foray into the big outdoors before we reach New Zealand. Uspallata, although not nestled in the mountains was a friendly little town. We stayed in a tinpot little hotel where the owner could not do enough to make us welcome. Bringing us tea in our room, giving us the low down on all the local sights, turning on our shower (ok, that was a little too helpful) and generally improving Argentina's odds in getting the topspot when respo...