Sam and E-J's Adventure

In our now traditional format we woke up relatively early and enjoyed a hearty breakfast of cereal or for Sam, badly heated bread on a camper gas cooker. After this we made our way down the rest of the coast to Hawkes Bay where we would be staying with friends of E-J''s family, Muff and Selby for a couple of nights. As we drove along the empty roads we continually came across signs warning us about wandering cattle and before long we found our selves surrounded by an abundance of sheep, which must have escaped from one of the nearby fields. Carefully weaving our way through them, we successfully avoided any sheep casualties and drove on.

After a quick stop in Gisborne to buy some CD's for the car, we arrived at Muff and Selby's around 6pm and enjoyed a delicious dinner party along with an incredible American couple who were staying with the Palmer's. They were both over 80 years old and had far more energy than us two put together. After a boozy evening we slept very well that night!

The next day we did some exploring of Hawkes Bay as recommended to us by Muff and Selby. First we drove over to Selby's farm and almost got lost but on finaly finding it we went to look around. Sam decided to drive into a field surrounded by thick grass and thistles. E-J not feeling too confident that the campervan would make it through this, decided to jump out and walk the rest of the stretch of field. Meanwhile, Sam managed to take out a few thistles, avoided a few sheep and finally almost wedged the van in a crevasse. After a few panicked reverses, wheel spins, skids and bumps, he finally got it free and quickly drove the van back onto the gravel path.

After this we then visited a few of the local beaches, which we are sure on a fine day, look absolutely stunning, but while it was raining and gloomily overcast, we really had to use our imagination. After this brief tour we met up with Muff and went to her Cheese Factory for lunch. It was a lovely place and what was more interesting, was to learn just how expensive cheese is in New Zealand. In fact it is thought of as more of a delicacy than a necessity. The cheese here was delicious!

Muff then drove us up to the most incredible look out point. We could see for miles and were really able to take in the beauty of Hawkes Bay.

The day was ended with a few drinks back at Muff and Selby's gorgeous house, which is situated on top of a hill, so that it looks out across the most spendid view of vineyards, fields, trees and mountains. It really was a very special place.

In the evening, we were treated to some lovely tapas down in the village at one of their local haunts.

In the morning we said our goodbyes and thank yous for a wonderful time in Hawkes Bay and headed to Napier to enjoy a day of cricket. The weather was incredible, and as E-J sat on the green basking in the sun, she began to think, that just possibly, she might be able to get into this whole cricket, spectator sport thing; well, provided she had some sun on her anyway.

After a brief appearance on the TV screen as an English supporter, E-J was in her element and enjoying the beers too as Sam had offered to drive.

England were playing brilliantly and by 5pm we had to leave the game just before the end, in order to get to our next destination during daylight.

We headed to a small village called Feilding (yes, spelt this way) just outside Palmerston North where E-J wanted to meet a friend she use to work with. After a couple of hours catching up and exchanging news and stories it was time to say our goodbyes and head to bed.

Sam's comments: What a great game of cricket, Paul Collingwood smashed the fastest fifty by an englishman!

E-J's comments: Hawkes Bay is such a wonderful place. It was just such a shame we didn't get to see it in the best weather as I'm sure we would have been blown away by its beauty.

We arrived back into Auckland around 12pm and met up with friends of ours from London who were heading to Chile that day. After a brief lunch and exchange of places and ideas about South America, New Zealand and Oz, we said goodbye to our friends, Dave and Elle and headed to the campervan company.

After a brief instruction on what and what not to do, Sam managed to successfully reverse the van out of the drive.
We were then on our way and within two minutes E-J managed to get completely confused with the directions to the supermarket! We stopped less than a mile from the campervan depot, so that E-J could drive and Sam could direct! Next was buying food supplies. On first parking the car, E-J decided to change spaces pretty quickly, when she noticed the porch parked next to her had a white scratch mark on the door; looking uncomfortably similar to the colour of our van! After a brief and successful shop, we escaped the supermarket to finally hit the road!

Next was finding somewhere to stay and being novices at this campervan malarkey, we decided to play it safe and stay in Hamilton just outside Auckland in one of the lonely planet recommended campsites. Finding it with nearly no problems, we thought the place looked a bit depressing with all these other campervans parked up around us. We decided this wasn't going to destroy our joyful spirits, so tucked into a good bottle of wine and enjoyed a ready cooked roast chicken and salad. This was the life!

By 8:30 am the next day we were on the road and heading to Rotorua to do the first of our many dare devil challenges, a Zorb ball. For those of you unaware of what this is, it basically looks like a hamster ball which you get inside and then throw yourself down a hill at great speed.

When we got there we were advised to do the option with water and after the necessary briefing and reading the small print that if you were to die it was not the company's fault, we were driven up the hill to begin our experience. E-J at this point was starting to go slightly white and feeling terribly nervous. Having just seen children of the age of 10 and 12 years old throw themselves down a few minutes earlier, E-J felt she really couldn't bring herself to pull out at this stage. E-J decided to go first and then Sam followed. E-J could be heard the whole way down, screaming for dear life. The guide informed Sam that he hadn't seen someone so petrified all day! Sam was silent and unimpressed with the lack of thrill factor involved. As we left this place to continue on the journey, E-J could feel her neck seizing up and realized she had somehow managed to crick it and was in complete agony! This left Sam the duty of taking the wheel!

We decided that we wanted to see as much of the North as possible so chose to follow the highway 35 all the way around the East Coast. This was quite a long distance to our night's destination at Hick's Bay, but we took great delight in taking in the lush scenery and indulging in the rather empty and windy roads.

By the time we reached Hick's Bay, it was 7pm, so we found a campsite for the night and Sam cooked a delicious carbonara while E-J indulged in a bottle of white wine to numb her pain!

Sam's comments: Hitting route 35 across to the East was beautiful. With Hellman's mayonnaise in the fridge I couldn't be happier!

E-J's comments: I'm loving the freedom of having a van. It's great to be able to take off whenever we want rather than having to wait for a bus as we had, had to do in South America. Also despite the fact that the bad weather keeps following us, I am still enjoying the beautiful green countryside and the sparseness of cars on the road.

At 8:30 am we were on the bus to the Bay of Islands in the North, excited that we were going to see some beautiful beaches. Immediately, we noticed the difference in the style of New Zealand buses compared to South America. Firstly, no food or drink was allowed on the bus, making it all feel and look immaculate. Secondly, the bus driver continually made announcements over the tanoy about places, who was getting off at what stop and any other trivial pieces of information we might like to hear. Our greatest highlight was when the bus purposely stopped halfway through the journey for a morning tea break. We absolutely loved this and took full advantage of it.

As the journey continued the weather started to deteoriate and as we looked out to the green fields and grey over cast skies, it reminded us so much of England!

By the time we arrived in the Bay of Islands the rain was torrential and after finding our hostel, we found a bar to sit in and have a beer, dwelling on the weather. Actually, only E-J could have the beer as poor Sam was on antibiotics.

After much deliberation, we finally got round to booking a boat tour around the islands for the following day in the hope that the weather might improve and ended the evening in a pleasant restaurant called 35 degrees South, which looked out over the ocean. The mussels there were ridiculously huge!

We awoke the next day to relatively bright skies and kept our fingers crossed that it would hold out for the day. The boat trip that we had organized was called the Cream Trip, which was once a boat trip that Captain Lane would do to pick up dairy products from lots of farmers around the bay. Now the boat delivers papers and other necessary items to the people who live around the bay.

Lunch was spent on the Urupukapuka Island. A beautiful bay with golden sand and blue water. We gazed out at the incredible view as we ate our typical backpacker lunch consisting of crisps and water!

Before we set off for Brett Cape we enjoyed an underwater boat around the bay to view the coral and fish. Due to the poor visability the tour wasn't too memorable but the shout from the skipper to an American tourist who was slow on getting on the boat of "hurry up love or I will feed you to the fish" had Sam in fits of laughter!

We then set off for the Bay of Island landmark known as Cape Brett, which has the original nickname of "whole in the rock".

When we got to the hole in the rock, the weather was beginning to get a bit choppy, so we couldn't go too close to it, but then a group of dolphins suddenly appeared with a couple of baby calves. The captain was sure they would come and play, especially since there was also a massive shoal of fish around the boat, but they suddenly darted off and the captain could only imagine that there must be a shark within the shoal and the dolphins had left to protect their young. It was fascinating to see something blue under the water attacking the fish, but no one was sure it was an actual shark.

When we finished the boat ride we decided to spend the evening exploring the quaint little town of Russell, which has the oldest building in New Zealand. This happens to be a mighty 200 years old...

After listening to a live band and having a bite to eat, we headed back to our hostel for a relatively early night, before heading back to Auckland the next day to collect our home for the next 3 weeks, a campervan.

Sam's comments: I wish E-J had reminded me to put sun tan lotion on! My face resembled the middle of the Japanese flag!

E-J's comments: This place is really something special. I would have loved to have seen it in the blazing sunshine, but we were lucky it didn't rain the entire time. The hole in the rock was pretty special and seeing all the dolphins was rather special too.

Our plane arrived into Auckland thirty minutes early and after a smooth customs, we made our way through the arrivals lounge and to a taxi.

On first impressions, we were amazed to find just how sparkling clean everything looked and so new. Also it was strange to suddenly be able to communicate with people without having to translate it first in our heads.

When we got to our hotel, it was 4:30 am and the guy on the desk informed us that check in wasn't until 2pm (though he thought we could probably get in by about 10am). Reluctantly and exhausted we left the hotel and found a 24 hour internet cafe to waste the next few hours.

By 10 am we were finally in our room and after showers and the necessities to stop ourselves from feeling like complete zombies, we decided to explore the city. We walked down to one of the wharfs and had a drink in a bar looking out to the sea. In the port there was an absolute abundance of boats. We had been warned that there were more boats in Auckland than people and seeing this, we could believe it.

After a stroll around, we made our way to the Sky Tower to get a panoramic and impressive over view of the city. We were not disappointed as it was fantastic.

From the top, we were able to see how Auckland was originally formed by a load of volcanoes, with the lava forming the flat ground which is now totally built up with houses. We found out that the volcanoes are not extinct, but actually dormant, though they haven't erupted in over 600 years. It is however possible that they could erupt at any time again.

Looking down across Auckland, we could really appreciate how it is literally made up of land and sea. Everywhere is surrounded by the sea and this reminded us slightly of Rio, although these Volcanoes are not quite as high as the mountains in Rio.

After we had spent a good time up in the Sky Tower and enjoying a good drink in the bar, we made our way back down to the port area and had the most delicious seafood supper. By 9pm we were on our knees, so decided that considering that Chile was a good 15 hours behind New Zealand, we were doing pretty well with the jet lag and could call it a day.

The following day Sam woke up in agony, due to a mosquito bite on his foot, which seemed to have become seriously infected. An hour later, a very grumpy Sam left the walk in clinic with antibiotics for the infection and was instructed not to walk on the beach or go in the sea until he had finished the treatment. Although E-J tried to reassure him this would only be a week and we still had three more weeks to indulge in lots of activities, he was determined to stay in a depressed mood for the rest of the day. This was slightly exacerbated when E-J insisted on going to the local aquarium, which ended up not only being ridiculously expensive but also rubbish!

Sam and E-J's moods were finally lifted when they found a lovely restaurant that evening and indulged in some more fine, fish cuisine.

Sam's Comments: I struggled with the jet lag, often found my self speaking Spanish! The Doctor was worried that I didn't understand what she was saying when I was prescribed antibiotics.

E-J's Comments: Auckland seems incredibly modern and clean, a real shock to come to after being in South America. The people here are also incredibly friendly and immediately make you feel right at home.

The bus ride to Santiago was six hours, with the most spectacular views of the Andes between Argentina and Chile. E-J managed to sleep for the majority of the ride, suffering from all the rich food and drink from the day before. When it came to passing the boarder, it seemed to be the most lengthy process to date. First, we had to queue for ages to be stamped out of Argentina and stamped into Chile and then all our luggage had to be taken off the bus and passed through a security, surveillance camera to make sure that nothing illegal was passing into Chile. Finally our hand luggage had to be sorted through.

When we finally reached Chile, we were completely confused by the currency, with 998 Chilian pesos equalling the pound! We grabbed a cab to our hostel at a cost of three thousand pesos! We spent the evening wandering around, close to the area we were staying in. Londres, with its cobbled streets and lined with little trees, sounded so beautiful, yet it had a run down feel to it which wasn't helped with the graffiti all over the walls.

The following day, Sam was forced into doing some tourist attractions, much to his dislike. We first wandered into Bella Vista, which is described as the trendy, bohenium area of Santiago. We then caught a tram like train up to San Cristobel. San Cristobel, is the statue of Mary, which some people consider to be the equivalent to Christ the Redeemer of Rio. We found it to be a little spoilt by the tourist gimmicks, with tacky music played as you wandered up to it and an adundance of seating to use as you stared up at the great statue. It was also surrounded by lots of lights and telegraph poles, which completely ruined the simplicity and view of the statue.

At this height, we had a good view of the vast city, but at this stage, Sam had really had enough of the place and wanted to get back down the hill. After a (what felt like a treacherous) cable cart lift down the mountain, hitting the tops of trees as we passed down, we made our way down to a small area just outside Bellavista where we had a quick bite to eat and then headed back to our hostel.

Aware that we had spent a ridiculous amount in Mendoza, we decided to spend the rest of the day and evening in our hostel room, watching trashy TV on the box and ordered a pizza for supper.

The next day we found out our great friends, who we had met in the jungle, Veronica and Ben were in Chile. Both extremely excited to bump into them for a fourth time during our trip, we hurried our chores of the morning and headed over to their hostel for the rest of the day and evening.

The next two days we followed the same pattern of turning up at Veronica and Ben's hostel at around lunchtime, making a mammoth sandwich and spending the rest of the day enjoying a few beers, table tennis, pool and a good banter with our friends.

Finally the 10th arrived and it was time to depart South America for New Zealand. At the airport, we were celebrating the fact that we had survived South America and then resorted to having a massive row about who got the drink they wanted with the last amount of Chilean money. The poor waiter, misunderstanding the argument brewing, managed to turn up with the wrong drinks and almost experiencing the wroth of E-J, became desperately apologetic giving us a complementary drink, which saved the day, completely defusing the argument and leaving us all in high spirits!

We then prepared ourselves for the next part of our adventure, New Zealand!

Sam's commments: Great to catch up with Ben and Veronica, have to say E-J has completely worn me out on statues and Plaza's! Bring on the Rugby and Cricket in New Zealand!

E-J's comments: I can't say we really gave Chile a fair chance as we only visited Santiago and did very little in the actual city. I would love to revisit Chile and see it properly as it is far too expensive for a backpacker. I can't believe that our time in South America is over. I have absolutely loved this place and a part of me will always been drawn here. My heart belongs to South America.