Nov 2006

We sat through the dodgy food and in-flight movies to arrive in Chile ten hours later, flying over the mountains and desert to touch down in Santiago.

We spent a few days in Santiago to get used to the time change. Santiago has a strong European feel to it reminiscent of Spain, not just because of the language. We spent a few nights here getting used to the time change and the South American latino culture before spending a few nights in a nearby town called Valparaiso. Nothing to say about this place other than it is notorious for pick pockets as we found out when Servane got rolled.

Back in Santiago we hopped on a 5 day tour heading to the north of Chile, going all the way past the Andes through the Atacama desert stopping just before Bolivia. From then on we spent the next week driving through the desert with about eight other people from around the globe all squeezed into a minibus.

The tour involved a lot of driving through small villages and desert with nothing but sand and mountains to look at. One notable stop was at the Pinguino de Humboldt National Reserve where we jumped on a boat to do an island tour to Isla Damas and Isla Choros. A wildlife reserve known for animals like the dolphins we saw in the waters, the sea lions on the rocks, the pelicans and eagles and the penguins scrambling to get out of the water.

We then spent the next day in Bahia Inglesa in the heart of the desert. We set up camp for two nights and all had a big barbecue and had a few more ‘Piscos’ which is Chiles national drink, a sprit similar to Pernod. We realised we may have had too many as we didn’t wake up the next morning until we all felt our cabin shaking and realized it was an earthquake, a regular occurrence in Chile apparently. We soon found out it wasn’t going to be the last one we would witness.

We stopped at the cemetery in the middle of the desert which is the only thing that remains of the old nitrate mining town close by and we passed the ‘Mano del Desierto’ or the hand in the desert, a sculpture made by a Chilean artist apparently to give the long distance drivers a reason to stop.

After spending a night in Antofagasta, a sprawling city in the middle of the desert we arrived at the Atacama Salt Flat after visiting the train cemetery on the way, and then another natural reserve to see the flamingos.

On our last day of the tour we paid a visit to the Salt Caves and Moon Valley which were pretty impressive.

We spent our last few days in Chile in the town of San Pedro. A small but traditional town with dust roads and short whitewash houses. We decided to do some horse riding around the desert close by before leaving for Bolivia.

After two and a half hours, we arrived in Auckland on the north island, where we picked up the campervan which was to be our home for the next ten days. Didn’t take us too long to get caught in a load of traffic around Auckland but once we were through this we made our way down through the rolling green hills arriving in Rotorua in the evening.

Rotorua is a geothermal site and has a number of geysers, hot springs and an active volcano in the area, you can tell as soon as you get close because of the smell of sulphur is overpowering. In Rotorua we went to the ‘Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland’ where we saw the daily eruption of the geyser, the underground thermal pools, hot springs and mud pools, we also bathed in a site for thermal pools, the hottest being 40 degrees. One day was spent doing a few of the more energetic activities including a cable car up to the top of the mountain, a sky swing, which was a capsule hauled up 40m then basically let go to fall over the side of the hill, once we got to the top, followed by the luge which is basically a go-kart back down the hill. In the afternoon of this day we did white-water rafting, freezing cold but bloody good. It has the biggest commercially rafted waterfall which stood at about 8 meters.

We passed through Taupo then onto Wellington soon after as the weather, since leaving Auckland had been raining constantly and freezing cold which kind of limited us with things to do, all we could do was sit in the back of the van and have a drink which is what we did the majority of our trip. We took the ferry the following day and the weather was as it has been but much windier, perfect weather for getting the ferry. People were throwing up left, right and centre, I don’t know how we managed to keep it down but we did and made it to Picton on the south island.

We passed through some pretty impressive scenery whilst driving with the mountains and winding rivers and all that, stopping at the ‘biggest suspension bridge in New Zealand’. The next place we stopped was the Franz Jorge and Fox Glaciers. Both small alpine style towns with towering mountains behind and the glaciers themselves are pretty striking. We were unable to do the glacier trek due to the weather so we had to console ourselves by walking to the base of both glaciers and doing a walk along Lake Matheson.

We finished our trip at Christchurch where we trawled the local bars and nightspots and spending the rest of the time in the hostel recovering.

We touched down at Nadi airport on the main and biggest island in Fiji called Viti Levu. We decided to leave Nadi as soon as we arrived in hope to find better weather further north so we took a boat the following day to the islands which are a couple of hours away from the mainland. Aside from the picture postcard scenery, Fiji is still quite a traditional place with most Fijians on the islands, outside of the resorts continuing to live a village lifestyle under the authority of a local chief and maintaining traditional values and culture. We got to know some locals as most of the resorts employ only locals from the villages on the islands.

Our first stop was Robinson Crusoe island, which was average, mainly due to the weather being pretty bad, this restricted us with things to do. As we went further north the weather improved and we found ourselves on another island called Waya celebrating our four year anniversary with a lobster dinner on the beach.

We then headed to the Mamanucas group of islands a bit further south and to the ‘party’ island called Beachcomber which was only 2 acres and you could walk from one side to the other in about five minutes. Wasn’t really all that but we managed to get drunk on jungle juice. On the way to our next stop we passed the island where they filmed ‘Castaway’ and then ‘Celebrity Love Island’. We stayed at a resort on Walu Beach, where another reality TV program was filmed.

At all of the places we went to we were welcomed onto the island with the traditional string band when we stepped off the boat and the Polynesian style dances at night and of course the traditional Kava ceremony, which consists of the passing round of the Kava bowl and the reciting of some Fijian words before and after drinking. Kava is the national drink and is a part of the lifestyle here in Fiji. It is made from the root of a pepper plant, actually a narcotic, it tastes like muddy water and leaves a numb feeling on your tongue but the more you drink the less you care.

Beachcomber Island

Kava Ceremony

Onto New Zealand.