La ultima semana en Santiago

The Plaza des Armas in Santiago


The lovely Wigan girl, oh and a very cute waiter at 'the happy bar'!


The mad international crowd who have made my week in Santiago really really fun and alcoholic!! Especially the Brazilian influence......

Let the studying begin

A brief update. I´ve managed to get myself last minute onto a spanish course in Santiago so I´ll be here for a week studying in the morning and planning in the afternoon - oh and lounging about.

I´ve had more success on the drinking front with a couple from Wigan, boy can he drink. We were then serranaded and hit on by some of the locals at the local bar we were at earlier, very innocent and controlled by the bar staff. They tend to look out for you ie. harmless flirting is OK but if it is persistent and turns more into harrasment the locals will step in. At a cafe this afternoon I was busy practicing verbs when someone decided to sit down and talk to me and wouldn´t even let me answer. A couple of minutes later the local suited business men who stepped in.

Saturday night I was the first into bed and was woken up each time the other 7 girls came back from their nights out (the last at 7am!), but the one at 6am brought back a guy which led to a mutiny in the room. Last night I was the last one in and also the first one up in the morning! My sleeping pattern is completely shot to pieces.

Anyway off to befriend Jorge at the bar Mi Casa round the corner from the hostel. He´s promised me a slap up meal tonight. Being female does have its advantages.......

Hola Chile

The poor Chileans are probably completely confused at my mixture of french, spanish and italian coming out to them but so far I´m pleased with my progress.

Chile --- sooooo different from New Zealand. Santiago is pretty and reminds me somewhat of Cuba apart from its a lot more affluent. It is also sooo hot here and smoggy. I will never complain about London again. Apparently the Andes range is directly behind Santiago apart from you´d never know as you can´t see them through the brown air that hovers over Santiago.

NZ is so quiet, the children are well behaved and everything is more like a retirement in pace compared to the fast paced, shrieking, laughing, musical Chile. Bizarrely tourist information places are closed here at weekends so I´m winging it until monday.

I´m currently in an internet cafe at the base of an old convent in the center of Santiago but I´m unsure if its a legit cafe : whilst the outside speaks of internet access, photocopying, copying to CD´s etc., the inside looks like a internet brothel with ´private cubicles for privacy´. I´m not sure if blogging and legit mails on hotmail are ´hot´ enough for them!

From NZ to Chile

In a way the title should read reflections on NZ but I thought that was too boring.

Favourite food - seafood platter at Eggcentric on Cormorandel Peninsula

Best experience - heli hike and white water rafting (joint 1st)

Bizarre sight - broken microwaves being used as post boxes in the Caitlins (South)

Bizarre fact - most bridges here are single laned when crossing a river. During winter the waters rise and a lot of bridges are damaged and have to be replaced. A single lane bridge is less expensive to replace.

Place I would want to spend more time in - Cormorandel Peninsula and Queenstown on one of the walking tracks in summer (when I'll hopefully have better weather!)

Sheep - I was expecting a sheep on every street corner but I was surprised with the lack of sheep out there. Farmers are moving to dairy and deer instead and then onto vinyards. There were a couple of long bus journey though with Yumi, my japanese friend going ´sheep´ each time she saw a field with sheep in it! I was close to booting her out of the bus to be with the sheep on a couple of occasions. Apparently fields of sheep are not seen in Japan.

I'm leaving at 1pm for Chile so this is the end for the NZ post. On with the next destination .......

Eggy smells, 17km walk and art deco (minus earthquakes)

Pictures are now loaded (27/03)

I'm a jinx. If you ever want a volcano not to errupt, a hurricane to change course or an earthquake not to happen, I can be hired to be there at any particular time. I am searching for all of these experiences and would love to experience them however they want to avoid me as evidenced by Cuba (hurricane), Japan (earthquake and volcano), Hastings NZ (earthquake). Hastings had 3 consecutive earthquakes the 3 days before I arrive. I arrive and the earthquakes for 2 days did not appear!

Nevermind as I had a lovely relaxing time with a family friend (Catherine) and her lovely (energetic) family in Hastings, NZ. It was nice to relax and go with the flow (such as a goey chocolate muffin with joghurt and lunch at a winery), relaxing at home and pottering about Hastings seeing the art deco architecture with me map reader being Scarlet, a very cute 11 month old baby. Thank you Catherine and Scott for putting me up at short notice and for looking after me.




It was then on to Taupo to do a 17km one day walk across lava fields and up the flanks of and in the crate of 2 active volcanoes. Whilst I enjoyed the views and the achievement at having done it, boy was it hard work. Walking up scree slopes and then running/surfing down slopes after climbing 'the Devil's Staircase' was a bit much.


Then some much needed relaxation in a spa pool and indulging again in volcanoes and thermal areas. Taupo is basically the start of a volanic ring going from Taupo to 150km to the east coast to a volcano called White Island. There are 5 active volcanoes in this ring and a lot of thermal areas. In Rotorua a normal park is trying to keep up with the thermal pools that appear (including some under people's houses (action of 'God' therefore no compensation) but it was good sightseeing for me!

Human shark bait anyone?

I'm disappointed and will now have to plan a separate trip out to South Africa (what a shame!). I think I have a death wish or something but I've been wanting for a while to get in a cage and get up close and personal with sharks. I'd read that you could do that in Kaikura but Lonely Planet had unfairly raised my hopes. Kaikura is famous for whale watching and also for swimming with dolphins and there is also a rare sighting of sharks but that's it.

So I plomped for the swimming with dolphins activity. Once again I was dressed up like a seal (eating fodder for some sea life in that area - although I think they would have got more than they bargained for with me!) and rode for 30 minutes on a rough sea till we eventually found a pod of around 200 dolphins. Once in the sea we had to act dolphin-like and make sounds in the snorkel to attract their attention. I have no idea what songs were coming out of my head as I think they were a mismatch of oi oi, eeek, blah blah blah, nelly the elephant, god save the queen. I do sometimes get worried about the state of my mind:)

It didn't take long for the dolphins to come swimming over (rather than away from us which would have been the sane thing for them to do) and dart right in front of me or beneath me. At one point I think I had about 5 around me. The underwater camera couldn't keep up with them so I reckon I've got photos of water and nothing else.



Yesterday I tried again to visit the 'Sounds' (carved out water valleys leading out to the sea) but as I was going to be thwarted by the weather again (we have english weather here for about 3/4 of the trip so far ie. grey, cloudy, wet, cold) I opted for a tour of the Marlborough wine region. Those who know me will recall I know didly squit about wines and that a 3 quid bottle from Tesco tastes just the same to me as a 30 quid bottle, so I really wasn't the best person to go on this tour.



Anyway, it was something different, in a famous valley and I had fun. I realised at the end of it that I still don't like red wine, Chardonnay does smell like socks (as one wine fanatic on the tour commented) and I love the sweet wines (guerswt...???) and the Sauvignon Blanc). At least I'll be no good as a footballers wife - I don't think Sauvingnon Blanc would fit:)



Anyway I've now made my way over Cook Strait and am now in the North Island, adjusting to the hustle, bustle of city life in Wellington.

West and South NZ update

I've been a bit amiss in posting but here's a summary of what I've been up to.

From Christchurch I passed over Arthur's pass (home to sets from LOTR and Narnia) over to the rugged, windswept and rainy (!) west coast. I'm now in the wildlife area of the scenic south being trapped on beaches by sea-lions and waiting for hours on end to see penguins arriving home.

The highlights are:

Meeting up and travelling with a japanese girl called Yumi. I'm also trying to teach her non-US english ie 'I want to' instead of 'wanna' and 'gonna' that she was taught in Japan!


Heli-hike on Franz-Josef glacier - we took a helicopter to just beneath the very top of the glacier and had a 3hr hike around caves, ridges, blue ice blocks and valleys on this very active glacier. It is the only glacier which is actually growing (6ft a day when we were there)! The thunder of falling blocks from way above was a good signal. Amazing experience and also the first time in a helicopter - woopee....


Wannaka - a lovely quaint village on the side of a brilliant blue lake surrounded by snow capped mountains. A gorgeous and relaxing place at the best of times but it was also cool watching storms approaching Wannaka from the end of the lake over the snow topped mountains.


Conservation volunteer in Queenstown. Q'twn itself is a horrible touristy place beside a gorgeous lake and surrounded by mountains. I decided to help out clearing wild pines from a mountain ranch, however as it had been raining non-stop (in NZ rain in the valleys means snow on the top of mountains) it had snowed on the ranch so instead we were helicoptered (!) onto the top flanks of Ben Lomond mountain above Q'twn. With only goat tracks to follow we slipped and slided our way across/up and down the flanks and up and down the 'gulleys' (so steep and deep they were almost ravines) connecting the flanks. I tumbled head over heels down one gulley, but apart from a few bruises am fine. I take that as being my adrenaline version of the bungee jump which Q'twn is famous for. Some of the english boys in my dorm had done 3 bungee jumps in 3 days - I think their brains must be scrambled! We started off at 9am and got back into town at 8pm, went to a pub and pampered the aching muscles with beer and potato wedges. A nice end to a mountain goat day (I've never done so much scrambling, climbing and falling before:))


Caitlins, southern route. I stayed at a small hamlet called Curio Bay and whilst I did'nt see any Hector dolphins (the seas were far too rough), I loved walking on the beach being blown around by 60mph winds and going back to childhood in running about in the waves. Soooo relaxing. In the evening I took part in a penguin watch with the Dept of Conservation ranger Matt, waiting for 4 kamikazee penguins to come back to their nests. The 1st arrived at 6.20, 2nd at7.30, 3rd at7.40 and 4th at 8.20. I was flipping cold at the end of it but it was brilliant to see. The penguins had chosen the most difficult bit of coastline ever to nest on and literally had to surf a wave over a plughole type area before arriving on the first ledge and then doing butterfly stroke until they finally jumped out on a rock and started preening themselves before finally jumping up to the nest.
We also saw loads of sea-lions relaxing or playing games along the coast, as well as a holiday camp for fur seals (sunbathing on the rocks, playing in jacussi type pools or swiming up and down rock pools, as well as some practising mountaineering skills up a pyramid shaped rock).


Less fun elements, however I'm glad I tried it, was river surfing - ie. you lay on half a surf board, get in a freezing cold river, and surf down grade 3 rapids. I was too boyant for this and kept on crashing into boulders whilst being beaten up by the rapids. That was on the 1st March and I'm still trying to get feeling into my left knee! I won this the night before in a pub famous for cocktails served in porcelain teapots and I was definately feeling a bit the worse for wear the next day when I found out I'd won river surfing and gave it a go. Not sure if the mistake was the river surfing or the drinking!