From Santiago, across the Andes and into Argentina

Maybe sleep deprivation is just the thing to get the creative urges going. I started to write this post at about 6am on a long distance bus travelling from Mendoza to Buenos Aires. We´d been on the bus since 8.30 the previous evening, trundling through huge, flat expanses of Argentina. It was one of those moments you get on long haul journeys, where everyone on the bus or plane seems to wake up at about the same moment. I glanced out the window and caught sight of a road sign - still another 312km to Buenos Aires.

Long distance buses are pretty unescapable feature of South American travel. With unlimited funds, we'd be on planes all over the continent, but putting in the hours overland at least gives you a sense of the terrain. Our journey from Chile crossed the Andes, where the border is high in the mountains (one hell of a commute for those customs officals!) and took us to Mendoza, Argentina. This is of course wine-making country, with rafting, horse-riding and trekking thrown in for the days when you've nearly had enough Malbec. (Unsurprisingly, we failed to have anything to do with rafts, horses or walking shoes during our brief stay. James even went so far as to throw his away before leaving Santiago, just to ensure there was no more epic cross-country nonsense on this trip.)

Heading now to BA, this city has in many ways always felt like the ultimate destination of our trip: apart from being the city we fly home from, it's been the place we've talked about most and which has been one of the most highly recommended cities from friends and fellow travellers. We hope it lives up to our expectations!

The Latin American leg of the adventure began in Santiago, one of the quieter and smaller capitals, but one which we came to really like. We took a week to find our feet and get over the monster 16-hour time difference from New Zealand, did a little sight-seeing and found that speaking no Spanish at all quickly became very irritating. After weighing up various options, we decided to take a week's lessons in the hope that we would at least be able to order some food and argue back with taxi drivers who swapped our 500 peso note for a 100... but that´s another story.

So the second week in saw us getting down to five days of emergency Spanish. The first lesson was pretty tough going - conducted entirely in Spanish, and both of us getting stressed out by the experience of being total beginners and getting everything wrong! We walked away the first day feeling this was an uphilltask we were facing (I don't know what else we were expecting, near-fluency at the end of one 90 minute session presumably) and realising that although we could now ask each other where we were from and what our jobs were - Hey James, where are you from? Really? Me too! - we still weren't in a position to get a coffee without an elaborate pantomime accompanying the few words we knew. However, the next morning over said coffee, we hit the coursebook and our homework exercises and got the first few bits of grammar sorted. I think it was our success in learning the verbs Ser and Estar that then gave our teacher a rather false impression of our capabilities: over the next four days we did a high-speed tour through times, dates, where things are ("the garden is behind the garage. The cat is under the tree etc etc) and the compexities of three different verb forms - James, walking dazedly away from one lesson: "Did she say we weren't doing any more verbs tomorrow?" Me: "No, I think she said we were doing a lot MORE verbs...."

But no one who knows me and James at all will be surprised to learn that we actually quite liked doing our little exercises and reading dialogues in which we were introduced to a range of fascinating characters called Paula, Pilar and Pedro who have conversations about what they had for lunch and how many brothers and sisters they have. By the end of the week, we had a basic grasp of forming questions and saying what we needed to say. The tandem conversation class probably topped skydiving in terms of terror but we managed to string a few sentences together... in the English half of the session, James, who had made it wordlessly clear that he didn't want to go, ended up in lively conversation with a delightful Brazilian girl - and I don't think any man can argue with that as an outcome for an evening!

Santiago has been a really cool city to get to know - cool bars in the Bellavista quarter, fantastic national buildings like La Moneda, the presidential palace that used to be the country´s mint, and sunshine, sunshine, sunshine. A walking tour gave us the inside track on the history behind the city, which bars we should visit, and how much you should pay for chorripan - a thin steak fried at a streetside vendor, then loaded up with guacamole, mayonnaise and salsa. With some elementary Spanish, we have ventured into the famous Cafe Haiti branches - a coffee chain that hit upon the idea of making their waitresses wear very short dresses to entice the customers in; unsurprisingly, I was the only woman in the there... and enjoyed nights out fuelled by piscolas (pisco plus cola) - then paid the price in the morning. Chileans have a reputation as the quieter, more reserved Latin Americans... so we can only imagine what Buenos Aires will be like!

New Zealand

Photos from top left, clockwise: I prepare to jump out of a plane; James walks across one of the many deserted beaches in the Coromandel Peninsula;James looks out over New Zealand´s Central Plateau mid-way through the Tongariro crossing; Mount Tongariro.

So, how many cliches of the New Zealand holiday maker have we managed to tick off over our three week stay? Hire a car and marvel at the jaw-dropping scenery – done. Do some Middle Earth tourism and walk across the craters and plateaus of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, AKA Mount Doom – still aching after two days, three months of idleness has clearly taken its toll on the fitness levels... Throw self out of a plane over Lake Taupo, NZ's largest lake – yes!

So far, so Lonely Planet... but there's been a lot more. Spend Christmas with a family we met in our first few weeks away, whilst aboard a boat trip to Halong Bay, Vietnam – we send huge thanks and best wishes to Bryan, Jacqui and Lyle Patterson, who adopted us for the Christmas period. Beers in the sunshine, several games of Monopoly (NZ edition of course), and more pavlova than one would think it humanly possible to consume made the 25th December a proper Kiwi Christmas.

So although we haven't made it to the South Island, we hope that our more well-travelled friends will spare us too much of a verbal haranguing, as it's been a pretty packed 20 days. Having spent a few days in Auckland taking in the sights, we met Bryan and Jacqui to head south to their town of Tauranga. After a relaxing weekend getting to know the dogs, we picked up the first of our hire cars from the wonderfully-named Rent-A-Dent: an achingly cool Nissan Bluebird – check out that walnut dash! We travelled north into the Coromandel Penninsula, winding our way through the mountains and walking on deserted beaches. We continued our research into New Zealand beers and stayed in possibly the nicest backpackers' ever, the delightful Tui Lodge. We also took our tranquil state of mind up a stage by staying in a Buddhist retreat for a night, meeting lots of alternative types from all over the world, including a Californian Buddhist nun. Meditation and simple, vegetarian food left us serene and discussing how to transcend our egoic selves – then we got back to lovely Tui Lodge and had a massive barbeque and some beers.

We got back to the Pattersons on Christmas Eve and settled down to enjoy Christmas in the sunshine. Owners of a small landholding (ok, pretty huge by UK standards), the Patterson family includes dogs Sting, an elderly Jack Russell, and Turc, a Flanders Cattledog who is similar in appearance to a small bear; also five sheep and three hens. Apart from the dogs, the animals earn their keep through their eggs and meat – home-reared lamb is something else – and the peacock who was foolish enough to wander across the Patterson homestead took a bullet in the head and took pride of place in the Christmas Day feast. A more traditional aspect of the Kiwi Christmas dinner is the pavlova, served with cream and strawberries – and proceeded to eat more than was safe for the arteries. You know who it was who flew the flag for the Brits on that one...

We Rented Another Dent from the 27th, picking up the second of our Grandma-magnet vehicles... this time taking us to Taupo to see the lake and, for me, jump out of a plane somewhere over it. After a few cancellations – they only jump if the weather conditions are just so – a fine morning saw me heading out to Taupo airfield. Bearing in mind the sage advice of my mother-in-law (“Now Helen: only jump if you're strapped between a sexy man's legs”), I was pleased to get up close and personal to a tanned, smiling Kiwi guy who told me he'd already done four jumps that morning. We climbed 15 000 ft and I realised that our position in the tiny plane meant only one thing – last one to get in, first to jump out! I can honestly say mild butterflies were the strongest nerves I experienced in the preparation, the climb... and see my smile in the exit photo! - but the feeling of the first few seconds falling through the sky was quite literally beyond terror! I was too frightened to even scream, I could hardly breathe, and I vaguely wondered how the cameraman who had jumped with us expected me to wave, high-five and shake hands... damn that personalised DVD option, it seemed such a good idea on the ground! A few more seconds flailing around and falling at terrifying speed and then – sweet, blessed relief – the parachute went and everything was peaceful. Looking around over the lake and the mountains was just beautiful and I took in every second as we gently floated down, landing effortlessly on a patch of grass the size of the average back garden. Meeting a very relieved James afterwards, I tried and failed to contain the babble of the post-adrenalin high. He was just glad I was ok – I don't think he liked my joke about getting me a bench with one of those engraved plaques on it to go by Lake Taupo, if I had ended up in it.

From Taupo it was down to the very tip of the South Island, to see in New Year in the capital city of Wellington. Putting in some serious miles over New Zealand, it could only be Flight of the Conchords on the CD player, so, singing along with Brett and Jermaine we arrived in Welly, another of those cities that New Zealanders think are busy – 'ooh, mind the traffic... and that one-way system's a nightmare!' - while we looked around at the empty streets and wondered why Kiwis still wait for the green man when the only two cars in sight are parked. Still, it made for a chilled and very enjoyable New Year's, with no queuing, no paying on the door and no standing five deep at the bar. We then experienced a weird sense of satisfaction the following day at 1pm, speaking to both sets of parents just as the UK New Year came in - by then, we were en route to Auckland for the next long haul flight... New Year - done. South America here we come!

Nicki's Birthday and the Hunter Valley

Some pictures from Nicki's birthday weekend...

Diving photos

Here we are in the waters off Phu Quoc Island... two brilliant days!

From the Temples of Angkor to Phu Quoc Island

One capital city, one plane, two boats and three consecutive days spent on buses.... It feels like a long time ago that we were on the lazy beach of Mui Ne. After a few grey days, our thoughts turned to what we wanted to see and do before our SE Asia time was up. Going to Cambodia to see the Temples of Angkor was the first consideration.... so we planned a route that took us by bus to Saigon and then a flight to Siem Reap in Cambodia the day after.

Siem Reap, nearest town and general support system to the temples, has developed into one of those towns that effortlessly relieves you of all your cash - but it does it with such a genuine smile that you don't mind at all. At the airport (where even the immigration officials where charming) we noticed that most of the tourists were in their sixties, retirees enjoying their freedom and ready for a good time. I'm sure they loved Siem Reap- lots of classy restaurants, elegant shops and faded French colonial architecture- and that's before they even got started on the temples. After the price of our international flight, we were in the lookout for bargains, and so had barbeques in the night market, Angkor draft beer at 75 cents a go and stayed at the Mandalay Guesthouse, whose slogan was proudly emblazoned across the doorway: Looks Expensive But Not!

We hired bikes that were probably in service during the construction of the temples for our first day of exploring. Catching sight of the Angkor Wat itself, set back behind a wide moat, was incredible. Inside, we found a huge temple with countless chambers and corridors. Although the main structures are iconic, what we found really breathtaking was the detailed reliefs and engravings covering every single surface of stone. When the afternoon sun got too much we retired to a shady spot for some lunch, looking at the famous entrance and those three almond-shaped towers, and thought: spectacular. And this is just one of a whole city of ancient temples. Kind of makes you wonder why we're so proud of Stonehenge!


We had a couple more jaw-dropping, camera-happy days at the temples, taking in Ta Promh, where tree roots and vines seem to be growing up, under and through the stones.... and finished with the mighty Angkor Thom, a walled fortress with the temple of Bayon inside. It's at Bayon where you see the famous pillars with the enigmatic faces carved on each of the four sides, the face said to be an amalgamation of the King who commissioned the temple and of a serene Hindu god.

Despite blowing a giant hole in our budget, our trip to Angkor was a fantastic introduction to Cambodia and its culture. From Siem Reap, we thought about our next move and decided on the boat over the Tonle Sap lake to take us to the regional city of Battambang (probably my favourite place name so far). When we boarded the boat for the seven hour journey only to find rather cramped, hard benches, we did as all the other traveller types did and found a spot on the roof for the journey. From here, we could see floating communities amongst the mangroves, and enjoyed waving back at all the children who screamed "Hello!!!!" at us as we passed. A little stiff but thankfully not too sunburnt, we arrived in Battambang for a two-night stay.

After a fairly uneventful couple of days (let's just say that one night would have been enough to see what there was to see...) we took a bus to Phnom Penh. We changed our plans slightly here as all the shifting around was beginning to take its toll, and for the sake of marital harmony decided to head straight on out and towards Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam. So it was back on another bus, off to the sleepy seaside town of Kep for one night - a rather melancholy place due to all the bombed out, blackened villas which the Khmer Rouge clearly took a dislike to - then up again for the final bus journey to take us back over the border and to the southern most tip of Vietnam. One ferry crossing and a minibus from the port later and we were on Phu Quoc. Easy!

So it's been a return to the punishing regime of beach, banana shakes and deciding where to watch the sunset for the past few days. Having totally recovered from all the moving about, we are now booked in to do some diving - a much-needed refresher course first, then two days on the north and south of the island. We were certainly glad to give the lady in the dive shop a good laugh when we handed over our PADI open water cards from 2000 - James has some traveller beads on and as I remember I had just suffered a particularly bad haircut from a hairdresser in Airlie Beach and resemble a potato. We are really looking forward to the diving - it will be great to be on and in the water rather than just looking at it (although that is very nice too).

Then three days in Saigon - next post from Sydney!

Love H&J

The Long Fish

In the past few days we've travelled from Nha Trang to Dalat and then onwards to Mui Ne. The Central Highland town of Dalat is a busy, unlovely town surrounded by spectacular hills, lakes, forests and mountains. It's popular with honeymooning couples, so there is a profusion of wedding dress shops and you are never far from a horse hitched up to a cute carriage or a pedalo shaped like a swan. Strangely, we didn't feel the need to sample either of these activities, and opted instead for hiking, mountain biking and kayaking, escaping the communist concrete of Dalat for the beauty of the Highlands. Our guides from Phat Tire Adventures were fantastic and we had a couple of brilliant days getting close to nature - actually face first in it at times.

Mui Ne is exactly as we hoped it would be: the most beautiful beach we've seen yet. A one street strip of resorts, restaurants and those little shops selling tat, a characteristic of every seaside town - reminds us of home....

Any readers who've visited Vietnam themselves will agree that the food here is reason enough to visit this country. All those dishes you thought were familiar turn out to be so much better: light and crispy spring rolls; fried wonton pancakes; noodle soup for breakfast. The more no-frills you go, the better it often is. We don't generally worry too much about what's coming our way if language and ingredients are just too complicated - indeed, sometimes it almost appears easier not to ask, especially as we sometimes think that Vietnamese people working in the hotel and restaurant trade have long ago established that the best way to deal with these foreigners is just to agree with them. Tell the tourists what they want to hear, and everybody's happy.

Example: James orders some "Cantonese Rice" for lunch...
James: I'll have the Cantonese Rice please.
Waiter: Yes.
James: Does this contain beef?
Waiter: Yes.
James: And chicken?
Waiter: Yes.
James: Great, that sounds good.
Waiter: Yes.

Rice arrives, I take a few mouthfuls. We agree that the bits of bacon are very tasty and that the prawns are an unexpected extra.

Why we did not reflect further on this experience, I don't know. Later that evening we went to a seafood restaurant - shack on the beach, plastic chairs, totally packed, all good signs - and thought we would go for the day's special...

James: So, the catch of the day, what is it?
Waiter: We have two. We have eel.
(Look of alarm passes between H and J)
Waiter: Or we have fish.
James: (with relief) Great. What kind of fish is it?
Waiter: A long fish.
James: Maybe ... mackerel? (mackerel in Vietnam are huge)
Waiter: Yes.
James: We'll have that then.

At this point, waiter motions us to follow him to the tanks where the live fish and seafood await their end. We look in the middle tank, note the eel and look more closely at the two very cross-looking Long Fish that are moodily swirling about the tank and intimidating all the prawns. They are grey, about two feet long, with blunt heads and two dorsal fins that stick up slightly above the water. We choose the bigger one. As we make our way back to our table, we have realised that our long fish is no mackerel - he's a shark. Barbequed, and served just with chilli and wedges of lime, he was delicious.

Today we go onwards from Mui Ne to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). We have just a night there before we get on a plane to Cambodia, flying to Siem Reap. This is the closest town to the Temples of Angkor: a massive and awe-inspiring complex of ancient monuments. Then we plan to make our way by land and hopefully by the River Mekong back into Vietnam, heading down through the Mekong Delta until we arrive at the tiny island of Phu Quoc - a relaxation stop before three days in Saigon and the end of our trip in Vietnam!

Love H&J

Hue to Hoi An and Nha Trang

In the past couple of weeks, we've travelled down the coast of Vietnam, getting as far as Nha Trang. A flight took us from Hanoi to Hue, the old capital of the country. After having to spend a few days too many in Hanoi, we liked Hue mainly on the basis of its not being Hanoi; our road-crossing skills are now well-honed and we step out into the flow of motorcyles without fear! It was fascinating to wander round the walled Citadel and the inner sanctum of the Forbidden Purple City- this was where the Emperor's wives lived and the only men permitted within these walls were eunuchs. However, quite a lot of mental reconstruction is needed on the part of the visitor: Hue is pretty much in the middle of the country, and as a result was the scene of fierce fighting in the American War (as the Vietnamese refer to 1968-). It was fairly hard to imagine that only four decades ago this peaceful city was a battleground, with the Citadel the sight of the Tet Offensive. It's also difficult to understand the resolute focus the Vietnamese seem to have on the future, with no bitterness or anger evident to us as Western travellers.... Perhaps the youth of the country (half the population is under 39) has something to do with this. Anyway, Hue gave us a taste of a more normal Vietnamese city, and even the city's legendary rainfall meant that afternoons were spent in bars drinking very cheap beer and playing cards (getting the hang of the traveller mindset now!)

It was after a day and a night of the heaviest rain we've ever seen that we boarded a bus for Hoi An, another few hours further south. If there was a "Vietnam" section to Disneyland's EPCOT - where a few square metres represent a country's culture in broad brush strokes- it would look like Hoi An. Yellow washed walls, tailors' shops, twinkling lanterns over the river... And plenty of tourists.... Actually, exclusively tourists. However, we intrepid types ventured out one evening to a real Vietnamese place, just a shop front by the road full of men drinking beer (no women at all... how strange). Taking a seat on the sort of small plastic chair that would be reserved in Britain for a particularly diminutive child of five we enjoyed cold beers from an ice box at 10,000 dong a go - that's about 30p - and plates of spring rolls, stir-fried prawns and morning glory with garlic (stop laughing. It's a kind of spinach). Having ignored James's reluctance to go and his several requests to go back to the old town, I was then pleased when he had to concede that it had been a really good idea and probably one of the best meals yet, and didn't remind him of this at all over the next few days.

The following day an ill-judged walk in the punishing sun led to us discovering the beautiful Vietnamese coast for the first time. The beach out of Hoi An is palm fringed, expansive and near enough deserted if you walk a few paces away from the road. Lunch that day was a whole mackerel, (maybe from the catch of one of the tiny one-man boats that came ashore that morning), sliced down the middle and barbequed, and we spent the day on sun loungers looking at the waves. After a fair few days moving around and sight-seeing (I know, I know, poor us), it was great to really feel 'on holiday'. A cooking class that evening led to more great food and learning some authentic Vietnamese recipes that we hope Adam and Nicki will let us try out on them when we see them!

One more night and it was back on another plane to Nha Trang, and having done quite a bit of culture stuff (James: "Look. I don't want to go and see more temples and shit. I just want to go to the beach"), the last few days have mainly been about where to go for breakfast and drinking the kinds of cocktails that contain blue curacao and come with a fruit garnish. Despite the weather reports of flooding and even typhoons (gah!), brilliant sunshine here all day. As a friendly restaurant proprietor told us, the islands surrounding Nha Trang protect it from really severe weather. He was plying us with fresh coconuts topped up with a dash of Malibu at the time, so we believed everything he said. Our next stop tomorrow is the Central Highland town of Dalat, so we will be well out of the way of any scary weather anyway.

Still trying to figure out a way to put a few more pictures up - hope you like the two at the top. The cocktail on the table is a prime example of what I am mostly drinking at the moment...

Love H&J