We haven't much to report at the moment as we haven't really been doing much for the last few days other than pottering about and reading. What we have managed to do is sort out our plans for the next week or so. Unfortunately the weather here is appalling as New Zealand is just coming into winter. We are not really prepared for this and so will be leaving on 9th June for the sunnier climate of Samoa. We even had to buy some new shoes to keep our feet warm and dry.

Before we leave we are going to do a mini tour of New Zealand (avoiding all really cold areas which unfortunately is most of the South Island). We set off on Friday for Christchurch and will work our way back up to Auckland taking in the highlights. The plan is :

* a day in Christchurch
* move onto Kaikoura for whale watching and lobster eating
* cross over wine country on the Tranz Coastal train to Picton
* take the Interislander across the Cook Strait cruising through the Marlborough Sounds
* spend some time in Wellington
* traverse the Wairarapa Basin (viewing New Zealand's largest windmill farm en route)
* travel north through the farmlands of the eastern provinces
* take a tour of Napier and visit some wineries (sampling the goods)
* travel through the world's largest manmade forest
* do a sightseeing tour of Rotorua
* visit the Waitomo Caves
* travel through the farming districts of Waikato

Tomorrow we are going Dolphin watching (fingers crossed that it is not cancelled due to bad weather which has been a bit of a theme of the last few weeks). Getting in the water with the dolphins is optional and a wetsuit is provided. I had a look at the water yesterday and it looks absolutely freezing. I shall take my swimsuit and towel but I do think that at this point it is highly unlikely that I shall actually venture into the water. But you never know, the sun might shine......

I am a bit concerned about visiting Samoa. Here are a few quotes from the guidebook that make me feel a bit worried :

"You'll sight some really striking physical types and meet a few unforgettable characters. Some visitors find it too intense, but almost everyone will leave with a story to tell about Samoa"

"The Samoan approach to life is almost the opposite of European - property and wealth are all thought of in communal or family rather than individual terms"

"The greatest burden of adjustment is on the young; between 1982 and 1992 Samoa experienced 230 suicides plus an equal number of unsuccessful attempts, 70% of them involving males aged 15-24, the highest suicide rate in the world"

"Because Samoan culture is a group culture, people can be overfriendly and unwilling to leave you alone"

"Samoan culture is extremely manipulative and there's a saying that you can buy anything with a fa'amolemole(please)....If you're staying in a village for long, somebody from another household may eventually come and ask you for money or something else you're carrying. It's important that you be firm with them.......If you "loan" money, consider it a gift, for if you insist on being repaid you will only make an enemy without collecting anything".

"Nobody means any harm, and violent crime is almost unknown, but be careful: the concept of individual ownership is not entirely accepted by the Samoans. Don't leave valuables unattended. Someone might even steal your laundry off the line, so it is better to hang it up in your room. Theft from hotel rooms and even beach fales in remote areas is also not unusual."

"If confronted by a belligerent drunk (quite possible in the evening), humble yourself. apologise even if you did nothing wrong, and ease yourself out of the confrontation. If it ends in violence you will always lose because the culture pressures relatives and friends to join in the attack even if their side is clearly wrong. Loyalty is priority number one, and proving that is a lifelong obligation."

"At times village children can be a bit of a nuisance, calling to you and crowding around in an almost mocking way. You can forestall much of this by smiling and saying hello as soon as you see them. Just keep smiling, keep going, and you'll soon leave them behind. It's important not to show any anger or irritation at their behaviour, as this will only delight them and make them all the more unmannered with the next visitor who happens by"

"Women receive more respect when dressed in a puletasi (long dress) or lavalava, and not slacks or shorts"

On the encouraging side we have :

"This said, don't be intimidated by by Samoan customs. Do your best to respect tradition, but rest assured that Samoans are indulgent with foreigners who make an innocent blunder. Samoans are fiercely proud of the fa'a Samoa and will be honoured to explain it to you. It's all part of the Samoan experience, not an inconvenience at all"

"Travellers inbound from a dreary industrial world may be forgiven if they imagine they've arrived in the garden of Eden....."

You may ask why we are going to Samoa if I am so worried about it and the honest answer is that as I chose South America and we did all that I wanted, Steve has chosen the South Pacific and this is one of the places that he wants to visit. It does have a reputation for being very beautiful and he says that it will be culturally interesting for us (I think he is right about that one!).

Well here we are in Auckland, New Zealand. I haven't done a blog since Santiago de Chile so this is one is probably going to be quite long.

After Santiago we went to Easter Island which was great. Steve has already put details up about this so I shan't go into too much detail. It was a very small place and quite rugged. The statues were really interesting and I am very glad that we stopped there en route. Four days is plenty enough time to enjoy Easter Island though as it is very small and there is not much to do. A week would be too long. I put this advice up because there are only two flights a week and you get the choice of staying for three days or a week. Most people opt for the three days wishing that they had an extra day but glad that they are not there for a week.

Then we landed in Papeete, Tahiti. What a shock. French Polynesia consists of many, many islands and I have always pictured the island of Tahiti as being a South Pacific paradise. Not so! All the pictures that you see are in fact other islands. Papeete itself is a complete dump and you really need to get off Tahiti straight away and out to the other islands. This was a bit of challenge for us as we arrived on a public holiday and we had to wait around for a whole day to get a ferry to Moorea (where most of the accommodation was already booked up, but we found somewhere in the end). Of course staying the day in Papeete just sucked money out of our pockets. Everything in French Polynesia is very, very expensive (unjustifiably so in most cases).

Moorea has a much better reputation than Tahiti and we were really looking forward to it. It is a beautiful island but getting around the place is a bit of a nightmare as the public transport is quite expensive and just seems to turn up at random intervals and we spent many hours just waiting for a bus to turn up. We started a diving course but neither of us finished it due to the awkwardness of the company. This is unfortunate as it was something that we had both wanted to do.

We stayed at the Motel Albert in a self catering apartment to try to save some money and also because we fancied doing some cooking for a change. Relative to everything else on Moorea it was reasonable value for money but relative to everywhere else in the world it was expensive for what it was. I was not at all impressed.

In summary of the whole Moorea episode I have to say that it was ridiculously overpriced and the people were very rude, arrogant and smug. The island is pretty but not as pretty as it thinks it is and is grossly overrated in my opinion. Whenever we asked anyone why it was so expensive they simply shrugged their shoulders and said "well it is beautiful and people will pay". Every opportunity to make money out of you was fully utilised. It is a shame because it gives a very bad impression of the whole of French Polynesia (ie. makes them look extremely grasping and greedy). My advice to anyone visiting French Polynesia is to skip the Society Islands (except pop into Bora Bora just for two nights just to see it) and move onto the other island groups which are much nicer with much friendlier people. However, you will still need plenty of money as nowhere in the region is cheap.

We made the decision to leave French Polynesia early as the whole money thing was just spoiling everything. Before we left we went onto Bora Bora and Rangiroa.

Bora Bora is beautiful - absolutely stunning. It looks exactly like the pictures. The different colours of the water don't look natural and we really loved it. We were able to go snorkelling off our overwater bungalow and spent many hours out in the water. Bora Bora is built up and quite developed but you can avoid that and just get on with enjoying the water and the amazing sealife there (which is why you are there anyway).

Steve has already reported on the hotel and the sting rays and sharks. The sting rays were fantastic. We got off the boat and the water was about one metre deep so you could either float or walk. There must have been about 30 sting rays swimming about our legs. Each ray was about a metre to a metre and a half in width and about two metres in length. They were brushing up against our legs (very velvety feeling) and not at all shy of us. There were so many of them that if you had been floating and wanted to stand up in the water you had to wait for a gap in them so that you could put your feet down (although I am sure that they would have moved out of the way if there was even the remote danger that you might stand on them). There was also a shark there but it was quite shy and just kept swimming around us about three meters away.

After the sting ray episode we went to feed the sharks. There were four of us on the tour and the boat was anchored and an additional anchored rope was put out for us to hold onto. This is so that we wouldn't all be swimming around and scaring the sharks. Of course we were all nervous before we got in. Try and get in the water with a ton of dead fish and blood to attract sharks and not feel nervous.....Plus the crew had been working us up by telling us all to kiss each other goodbye, etc., etc.

The "feeding man" put the fish blood into the water and made lots of splashing noises on the surface of the water. This was to make it seem as though a kill had occurred. Slowly, one by one the sharks turned up. The feeding man would wave the dead fish about to lure them closer to us. We were about three metres behind the feeding man. For some absolutely mad reason this made me feel safe! I think it was the thought that he was first in line if anything went wrong and we would probably have time to get onto the boat! Sharks are actually very cautious animals, contrary to popular belief and would circle the fish for ages before plucking up the courage to take it. It made me feel sad that they are hunted so much. When swimming around they would sometimes come around the back of us which was a bit nerve wracking. We were so close to them it was like looking at them in Sea World or something. They were very beautiful although had very unexpressive eyes.

After the shark feeding we went to a superb snorkelling site where we had a close up with a moray eel (ugly animal) and tons and tons of fish. I have taken loads of underwater pictures but I am not sure how they will turn out as I haven't used one of those underwater cameras before. The whole excursion is one of the holiday highlights.

We spent the next day lounging around our bungalow and feeding and snorkelling with the fish. Steve, aka Dr Doolittle, spent hours in the water feeding the fish (over several days) and by the end of our second week in Polynesia every time he got in the water a posse of fish would turn up and follow him around even if he had no food for them!

Rangiroa was nice and relaxing but our planned excursions were cancelled due to rain (it being a tropical paradise and all that....) which was a shame. Regardless, we had a nice time there.

That pretty much brings things up to date. Auckland is strange. So civilised, organised and English speaking! A nice change. You can't be an intrepid adventurer all the time!

Just a quick blog from New Zealand. We arrived in Auckland a few hours ago and we're still in shock - people speak English here! And they drive on the left! And there are bookshops! I think it's all gone to our heads a bit. Anyway, we are checked into an apartment where we can cook and wash our clothes (which are getting fairly stinky now). We'll catch up on our sleep tonight and produce a full entry about French Polynesia in the next few days.

Here are the selected highlights: Polynesia is an amazingly beautiful place - especially Bora Bora. It really does look like the pictures with the most amazing coloured lagoon water, greens, blues, turquoise and cyan. We were upgraded at the Bora Bora Lagoon Resort, for some reason, so that we had an overwater bungalow (complete with a glass floor for observing the fish). Linda thought it was the most romantic place she had ever seen - she was quite moist-eyed looking around the suite. I enjoyed feeding the fish (by hand) off our platform over the water. We went on a good excursion around the lagoon seeing lots of stingrays and some worryingly close sharks.

We had a beach bungalow at the Kia Ora on Rangiroa, which was a bit amateurish but nice. Rangiroa is a very strange place - it's a coral atoll which is about 60kms in diameter, yet the maximum width is only 300 metres. It's possible to see from the lagoon-side to the ocean-side, yet it is impossible to see the land on the other side of the lagoon. The weather was not kind to us in Rangiroa - being blustery, overcast and rainy.

In summary, getting away from Tahiti and Moorea was a good idea. The people were much friendlier away from those two islands. If we ever go back, I'd go straight out to the Tuamotu archipeligo and carry on to the Marquesas.

Greetings from Moorea - land of beautiful seas, densely forested mountains and extortionate prices. We have been haemorhaging money since we got here and it's beginning to impact our enjoyment. So we've decided to bite the bullet and abbreviate and intensify the Polynesia trip. We've lopped about twenty days off the allocated time and we're going to some swanky hotels - the Bora Bora Lagoon Resort and Kia Ora on Rangiroa.

This might cost more than we were planning, but we will at least enjoy the money we're spending. Instead of dying from a thousand cuts, we'll open an artery for a controlled period of time. We'll use the spare time to visit Tonga for a few weeks.

Anyway, now I've gotten that off my chest ... what have we been doing? Mostly it includes the water. We've both had some scuba lessons - though Linda didn't enjoy the experience, she has no faith in the technology, so she's stopped. I really enjoyed it, especially a dive I did outside the lagoon. I saw about twenty-five blacktipped reef sharks. These are fairly small sharks (less than two metres long) but still, a shark's a shark - especially when it is only about five metres away. Also spotted were a couple of Moray eels (both more than two metres long), parrotfish, tuna etc etc

Other than that, we've had lazy days at the beach and exploring the island. The lagoon is a beautiful turquoise colour and the temperature is pleasantly cooling. Especially nice when the sun comes out and the temperature soars into the thirties. A problem is the dearth of public transport. There are a few buses going around the island, but they seem to go whenever the driver feels like it. This means it's not uncommon to have to wait at least an hour for one to turn up if you want to go from one side of the island to the other.

Just a quick diary entry as we are in a cybercafe with enormous charges and fairly poor speeds (it is about $12 per hour - we're used to paying about $2/hour). We are currently in Moorea, part of French Polynesia, and since the last blog we've been in Easter Island and Tahiti.

We both enjoyed Easter Island. It's a very small place - only 3000 people live there - and perhaps 20,000 people visit each year. The main, if not only, reason for visiting the island are the statues. There are a thousand of these sombre statues (called moai) around the island in various states of repair. They represent clan elders and founders and provide protection to the village they look over. Some have been completely restored and re-erected on their platforms (or ahu). They are impressive (from 4 to 10 metres high), with very expressive faces - sad and wise - and some had red "top knots" like bulky hats. One even had eyes made out of coral and obsidian (which gave it a doll-like appearance and reduced the dignity of the statue). Most of them are fallen and lying broken-backed besides their ahu. There was something quite haunting about these huge statues lying damaged on the ground. It wasn't clear whether the statues had fallen because of natural causes or as a result of inter-tribal wars. By far the best, however, was the quarry where the statues were carved before being transported to their sites. About 600 moai are at the quarry. Some of them were standing upright but buried in the soil. So that they looked like some strange plant growing out of the fertile ground. Some were still attached to the mountain. Some were lying broken on the ground, where a transport accident had rendered moot a year's work.

We also visited the site of the BirdMan ritual - an annual competition to find the paramount ruler, which involves climbing down a sheer cliff, swimming across 4 kilometres of water, climbing another cliff to collect a tern's egg and then returning with the egg still intact. Pretty hard work it looked.

Can't say much about French Polynesia at the moment as we've only been here a short time. What I can say is that it is monstrously expensive. Papeete on Tahiti is probably more expensive than Buenos Aires was in the days of dollar-peso parity. Just one example: two beers, a fruit juice and a cocktail was over $30!

Well, we are leaving South America tomorrow to start the adventure across the Pacific. It has been absolutely fantastic - much better than I was expecting. We have managed to travel from the Equator (where we almost suffered from heatstroke) down to Patagonia (where we saw icebergs) with absolutely minimal Spanish abilities and going most of the way on rickety public transport.

One thing that has amazed me is how easy this travelling lark is! I think this has partly been because we are inherently cautious and paranoid (so that we do not wander the streets drunk, we keep an eye out all the time for bag snatchers etc) and partly it's because it really is not so hard - especially as people in South America have been very welcoming and friendly.

So tomorrow we are flying to Easter Island - also known as Rapa Nui. (Interestingly, this means "navel of the earth" and is the second "navel" we are visiting as Cusco means the same thing.) Most of the island is a World Heritage Site due to the many statues. (We've been "collecting" WHSs - I think we are up to about 15 so far. Linda did not mention that the cruise to San Rafael took us to another such site Although neither of us were impressed with this.)

We have a few days on Rapa Nui before we fly on to Tahiti in French Polynesia. We are planning on learning to dive here (and also, perhaps, how to surf) before we take off on a tour of the different islands covering Moorea, Huahine, Tahaa, Bora Bora and Rangiroa. I've got a feeling that FP might be quite expensive - so one possibility is that we will zoom around the archipeligo very quickly and then catch a flight to the Cook Islands. These seem to be cheaper than FP and therefore better for hanging out in.

Another diversion we might make is later on. We have ten days scheduled in New Zealand before we fly to Independent Samoa. We might cut that short and use the time to go on to Tonga. (Linda is looking forward to seeing the men of Tonga, convinced as she is that they all look like Jonah Lomu.)

We are back from our glacier cruise and must report that we had a really nice time. We arrived on the evening of Friday 26th April and began what turned out to be a rather alcohol and food full week. All alcohol and food was included in the price and they were very generous. We had a welcome cocktail evening on the Friday evening and an excellent meal. We were allocated our table in the dining room for the rest of the week and were seated with an Australian couple who were 78 and 75 and doing a six week trip across South America. They do a big trip every year and told us that every time they think that they are doing their last trip! They were very nice and quite good fun although the woman could yak for Australia and you couldn't get a word in edgeways sometimes which could be a bit tiring at meal times. I often wondered if she would notice if I put my headphones on and listened to my walkman instead......

The boat had a 160 passenger capacity but there were only 47 of us on board in total, which was nice. There were 34 crew members so we were well attended to. We set sail on Saturday morning (as not everyone boarded the boat on Friday) and headed for the San Rafael glacier.

We had splashed out on a bit of luxury and had a top deck cabin. The downside of this was that it was a bit cold, especially as we went further south. We had an electric blanket on our bed but only one side was working properly and the crew were unable to resolve this. So Steve (feeling the cold more than me) slept on the warm side and I had the cold side. The plus side of the cabin was that we had good views and it was very spacious. Also some of the downstairs cabins had rather small bunk beds whilst we had a queen sized double bed. So the old adage that you get what you pay for is true. I have to award the "best shower in South America" prize to the shower that we had. Powerful with tons of hot water. It was so hot that you had to turn lots of cold water on too. A real treat for us (hygiene having been a bit of a problem on this trip).

We were due to reach the glacier on Monday and frankly spent most of Saturday and Sunday lazing around on deck (with gloves and scarves on), in the bar, in the restaurant or sleeping off the excess consumption. It is very difficult to not drink alcohol when they make up a whole load of cocktails and line them up on the bar for you to just help yourself. We had a no alcohol before early afternoon rule but some of the party did start rather early......Of course, being older people and pretty much everyone in couples it was quite civilised. The food was excellent, especially the last night's dinner. We don't need to eat for another week.......It feels like since we went to Argentina we just haven't stopped eating.

We reached the glacier on Monday about 9am. As we approached you could see icebergs starting to appear in the water. I thought that icebergs were white but they aren't - or rather these ones aren't. They are a stunning range of colours (from dark green to sky blue) and some are more solid in colour whilst others are more translucent, like crystals. To get really close to the glacier and icebergs we got off the ship and into small boats. The icebergs were really stunning and the glacier was fantastic. We took tons and tons of pictures but of course we know it won't do the whole thing any justice. The day at the glacier is a highlight of our holiday and has made it onto the top ten highlights list.

The glacier itself was beautiful. Very jagged and cracked and all different shades of blue. Bits kept breaking off and falling into the water and when that happened it make a sound like very loud cracks of thunder. We were in the small boat for a good two hours and chipped some ice (30000 years old) of one of the icebergs to have in with our "glacier toast whisky". Yes, even on the small boat they brought a plentiful supply of alcohol! Once again it is the natural things that are so memorable and enjoyable on this holiday and once again I can't find the words to describe just how stunning the whole scene was.

We returned to the ship for lunch and then went closer to the glacier in the ship in the afternoon. We were extremely fortunate that we saw an amazingly huge piece of ice break off the glacier. The bit that stuck out of the water (and only 10% of an iceberg sticks out of the water) was about 15 metres high and 50 metres wide. It was the most beautiful colour. From green to blue all in one iceberg. Watching it fall was like watching in slow motion. The waves that it gave off were enormous and shook our ship. Wonderful.

It was extremely cold and most of us spent the rest of the day warming up and chatting about what we had seen. There was a surprising mix of nationalities on the cruise. Indian, English, French, Uraguayan, Mexican, Brazilian, Spanish, Australian and quite a lot of Chilean people. Not much English was spoken so it was a good chance to practice our Spanish.

The next day we went to some thermal pools that were 34 degrees celcius in temperature. We enjoyed splashing around in them so much that we decided that we wouldn't go on a boat ride that everyone else was doing and so had them to ourselves for a about an hour and a half. We did some swimming and then played rather violent water polo. It was more like combat fighting for the ball and we both sustained injuries. Me in the face and Steve in his nether regions. Again, as with the Ecuadorian thermal pools, they fade a bit in comparison to the spas in Baden Baden but were nevertheless nice and we just have to accept that the Baden Baden ones were exceptional.

On Wednesday and Thursday we cruised back north towards Puerto Montt stopping off to see local towns and panoramic view points along the way. We didn't really do much other than eat, drink and sleep. On Thursday night we had the farewell dinner which was also the last one of the season as there are no more cruises until September because of the weather. I can confirm that it was very cold, windy and wet most of the time. Insanely, we had actually packed some shorts and sandals for the cruise!!! Luckily we had also packed our woolly hats, gloves, waterproofs, etc.

Yesterday (the final day) we had breakfast and then were taken to the airport to catch our lunchtime flight back to Santiago. The rest of yesterday was a bit rotten but we are back on form today.

We leave for Easter Island tomorrow afternoon and have absolutely no idea what the internet situation (or for that matter phone situation) is like there. We leave on Wedneday night for Tahiti where we are optimistic about finding an internet cafe. We will be visiting some remote islands in the upcoming part of our trip and probably won't be able to keep this website as upto date as frequently as we have been doing. Also I don't have high hopes for the connection speed of any internet cafe that we find which is always very frustrating.

There are some random points that I would like to mention about South America because I will forget otherwise.

1) In both Argentina and Chile when you collect your luggage at arrivals you have to have it x-rayed before you leave the secure area! This is the first time that I have seen that.

2) The Buenos Aires metro reminded me of the French one (dirty and you can see the next station when you look down the track). It had some great carriages on one of the lines which were like old English trains. They were wooden and (a bit worryingly) you opened the (wooden) doors by sliding them open yourself. You could do this at any time, even when the train was moving.

3) The more south you come the more you realise that most retail outlets are operating a job creation scheme. Chile is very accomplished in this matter and made the Bolivian retailers seem like amateurs. You go into the shop and pick up the goods that you want. You give them to someone who writes out a purchase ticket for you and takes the goods for you. Then you go to the cashier and get your receipt. Then you take the receipt to another counter where two people are waiting for you. One of them will put your goods in a bag and the other one will take your receipt and stamp on it that you have received the goods. This happens even in the smallest shops and we had to go through this whole regime when we just wanted to buy a packet of crisps in the very small local shop. They could hardly fit all the staff behind the counter!