Holy crap! Last night in South America!

It seems impossible to me, but tomorrow afternoon we fly out to the UK. In hindsight, the past 9 months-or-so have flown by for us - even though we've seen and done amazing new things almost every day, I can't quite believe that this leg of the journey is all but …

In other news...

For those of you who don`t know, we've decided to get hitched! w00t!

Massive catch up!

I`m a whole country behind in updating this thing - shit!

Righto - so since I wrote last, we´ve escaped Bolivia and headed across Northern Argentina and into the coldness and darkness of Patagonia. Right now, we´re waiting to catch a boat in Chile - best I do a …

The weirdest thing we've seen so far...

Our travels have led us to witness all kinds of strange stuff - weird creatures and plants, bizarre customs and rituals, and even dried llama foetuses for sale in the market. However, the new title holder has got to be Bolivian Cholita Wrestling. For those of you who …

New altitude record - 5360m!

On top of Chacaltaya, outside of La Paz. The world´s highest ski field - it´s actually on top of a glacier!

Introducing Rainbow Punch Buggy!

Due to massive numbers of VW´s in Peru, we have adopted a more complex set of game rules - for the true PB enthusiast...

• Monday - Red buggies only
• Tuesday - Orange
• Wednesday - Yellow
• Thursday - Green
• Friday - Blue
• Saturday - White
• Sunday - Black

Feel free to play along at home!

Last night´s dinner in Arequipa

We splurged on a fancy restaurant last night - and dined on...

Thigh of Cuy (that´s guinea pig) in a bitter chocolate sauce with a risotto of quinua (an Andean grain) and white maize.

Fillet of Alpaca in Chicha de Jora (that´s spit-fermented maize beer) and a …

...only chicken, ok?

Sage advice for anyone with a stomach problem, I´m sure.

This is by way of an apology for not posting anything new for so long. Truth is, I´ve spent the last week somewhat "bogged down", if you get my drift. I´ve been making friends with uncle porcelain. My bum …

The Game Way of Chess

We bought a $2.50 chess set yesterday - the rules are the finest example of badly translated Chinglish I have ever seen.

In other news, picked up the spanking new camera this morning. W00t!

"Excuse me, is this your newspaper?"

a.k.a. "Thieving pricks stole my backpack"

We had to relax, didn't we? We're currently in Cuenca, in Southern Ecuador, which is a lovely city with green squares, fantastic old architecture and an uncommon lack of stray dogs roaming around. Perhaps this is why I put …

Baños - or <em>the Volcano incident</em>

After Quilotoa we rolled into the tourist haven of Baños - named after the thermal pools, not the quality of the toilets. The town sits literally at the bottom of a very active volcano - it's about 8km downhill from the 'bit where the lava comes out' to the centre …

Post new year's update highlights reel...

The dear old internet has been a rare, slow and expensive beastie since our last update, so please excuse the lack of stories. Here's a quick rundown of our recent adventures!

New year's eve on the beach

Mindo Lindo!

Well that was cool! We´ve just left the lush paradise of Mindo, on the other side of the mountain from the not-so-lush, not so paradisical Quito. We stumbled across a flyer in Otavalo for some environmental volunteer work there, and signed up for two weeks of we …

All uphill from here (Galapagos adventure, part two)

I promise part two is going to be both shorter and sweeter than part one. Things really did get better, and quickly after our first day.

Galapagos cast of characters...

The Ecuadorian market experience...

In the spirit of mcSweeney's, and a lack of time for more full featured prose, here's a list of...

Things you can find at Ecuadorian markets

• Llamas (fuzzy, funny, little and running)
• Guinea pigs, both live and barbequed with spicy sauce
• Beetles, both live and deep …

Really, really should have learned Spanish...

Man - this is hard! The past two days have been a succession of blank stares, 'no entiendo', and frantic but stealthy flipping of phrasebooks. We had a few days of listen and repeat lessons in the car in NZ, and some basic 'hello, thankyous' worked out, but we got here, …

A quick note from Christchurch

Christchurch - the city of ducks - is an awesome place. We spent all day wandering around yesterday - seeing all sorts of sights. There were ducks - plentiful ducks of all shapes and sizes.

Tom in Arrowtown warned us that Ch'ch is (paraphrasing a little here) 'a …

Weeeeeee!!!!111

Woke up this morning and, after a rousing game of 'mega duplo tower stack' with Isabella, headed out to Carol and Tom's new venture, the Arrowtown flight park - a dedicated landing field for hangliders and paragliders. We had a scout around …

The Beginning...

Oh man - the first post. The pressure.

Well - we made it to NZ - a pretty big first day - up at 3am to leave for the airport. It rained. We got to Sydney - it was raining. Flew to Christchurch (hereafter referred to via the charming local abbreviation 'ChCh') - it …