Jan 2008

So, I arrived in Santiago yesterday after a very long day. I spent the morning in Auckland getting myself organised for flying again, had my last vaccination that I should need for a while, did a bit of shopping etc. My flight left Auckland at about 5.30pm, but 11 hours later I arrived in Chile at lunchtime, about 4 hours before I took off. The flight was OK, gave me a good chance to start practising my Spanish reading a Chilean newspaper and playing hangman. BUt I didn't manage to get much sleep so once I'd found the hostel I didn't do much for the rest of the. The hostel I'm staying at is really nice, a converted mansion so big rooms and lots of courtyards to enjoy the sun in. THe weather here is a lot hoter than Auckland, so thats taking a bit of getting used to again.

Today I have had a busy day sight seeing as I've decided to start heading south tomorrow as I've booked on a tour bus that only leaves once a week. Santiago seems an interseting city, obviously a lot of European influence here so hasn't been too hard to get used to being somewhere else completly different. I've walked around a few of the parks and been to a couple of really good museums, one about ancient history in South America, and one about the communist poet Pablo Neruda both things that I new nothing about before.

So far my Spanish seems to be enough to get by with, people can understand what I'm saying, and I'm just very slow to understand and reply to what people say to me. But I guess I'll be getting a lot of practise over the next few months.

From the Bay of Islands I travelled further north to Kaitia, the main town in the far north of NZ. Stayed in a very nice hostel here for a few days. Did a very good day trip to Cape Reigna, the most notherly point of the country, stopping at several places on the way. One of the main parts of the trip was a bus ride up 90 mile beach, where we only just made it to the top of the beach as the tide was coming in. Also had chance to do a bit of sledging down sand dunes, which was good fun as I'm going to miss out on Winter this year and the sledges actually went suprisingly fast. Although days later I was still trying to get all the sand out of my clothes. Had a nice walk to the lighthouse at the end of the cape, where you could see where thye Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea meet. On the way back down the peninsula we stopped at a very nice white sandy beach, and an amazing ice cream shop.

Kaitia itself was a bit of a strange place and not really organised for tourists despite there being a lot of things to see in the area. I tried to hire a bike or car for a day but couldn't get either so I was stuck in the town. It did have a small museum which had some quite interesting local history. Other than there were a few shops but they all closed for the afternoon, so I was stuck at the hostel for the rest of the day.

From Kaitia I went back down to Auckland, where I've spent the last few days, although I haven't actually spent a lot of time in the city. On New Years Eve I went to Wiheke Island, which is about 45minutes away by boat. The island is one of the biggest in the area and was more developed than I was expecting, and seemed to be the place to go to celebrate new years eve as it was really busy. I did a tour of the island in the morning. It has a lot of nice beaches, vinyards and is obviously the place for New Zealand multi millionaires to have a second home. Lots of huge designer homes that they travel to on their private yachts or helicopters. In the afternoon I did a nice coastal walk and a much needed swim at the beach as the weather has been really hot again the last few days.

I also spent a day going out to Rangitoto Island, a smaller uninhabited island that only started forming when a volcano errupted there 600 years ago. Was an interesting walk up to the crater, another good geography lesson for me.

To see in the new year I went to the main square in the city centre where there were a few bands playing, none of which I had heard of and none of them were actually very good, so I went to the pub next door instead. At midnight there were fireworks from the sky tower, so quite a normal new year really.

The next day I did the coast to coast walk, walking from one side of NZ to the other, but its only 16km long. Was a good way to see a lot of different areas of the city, which is actually really nice when you got out of the main city centre which I think is a bit run down. Also stopped off at the museum and saw a really interesting exhibition about Charles Darwin and evolution. He went to a lot of places in Chile and Argentina that I'm thinking of going to and its made me want to go to the Galapagos as well.

I'm flying to Chie this afternoon, so excited about that now. But I've loved being back in New Zealand as its just such a varied country and perfect for all outdoor activities.