Through the Interface

Picton to Christchurch

As much as I hate compressing so much into a single post, I don’t see any other option if I’m to bring you all up-to-date. So please accept my apologies for not doing justice to New Zealand’s absolutely incredible south island. In this post we’ll talk about the first part of the journey through the south island, from Picton to Christchurch. I’ll cover the journey from Christchurch to Queenstown in the next post. Here’s a quick view of our journey southwards, for context. Our adventure on the south island started the Saturday before last. We took the 2.45pm Interislander... Read more →

Wellington

We arrived in Wellington on Friday just in time for lunch. We parked – based on the recommendations on CamperMate, as ever – at the Barnett Street car park. Parking a motorhome for 24 hours down by the wharf in Wellington costs just $30 NZD. I left my family for an hour to meet up with Jason Howden for a quick lunch at Mojo Waterfront, and then met back up with them afterwards to go and visit the Weta Cave. This is a nice tour over at the Weta Workshop that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the company and... Read more →

Rotorua and the road to Wellington

It’s been an exciting week, here in New Zealand. Not only does the country have a new coalition government (which – somewhat controversially – doesn’t include the party who finished in first place in the recent election), but the polls have just closed on the Bird of the Year contest (my vote goes to the Kea, because it has an awesome name). Crazy days. After leaving Auckland and then seeing Waitomo on Monday and Hobbiton on Tuesday of last week, we arrived on Tuesday evening in Rotorua. (I can’t believe I’m somehow now nearly a week behind on posts…... Read more →

Hobbiton

A big thanks to Mike Burke from Aurecon for pointing us at Hobbiton (among other places). I suspect we’d have made it there anyway – it seems somehow inevitable – but it was certainly from Mike that I first heard about this place. It would be a shame to visit New Zealand and not experience something of Middle Earth. I’m not about to spend our brief time here tracking down the various locations that were used to shoot The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but for sure we had to do something. After LoTR was filmed, the... Read more →

Waitomo

After a fantastic weekend catching up with The Joneses (Sean, Sharon & their kids) in Auckland, we headed out on our own in the motorhome. We drove south to Waitomo, with the aim of visiting its famous glowworm caves. (We’d seen them featured in the first series of the BBC’s excellent Planet Earth.) It took a touch over 2.5 hours to get there, so we stopped for lunch at a petrol station on the way (ah, life on the open road). On arriving at the caves, we found a few different options for tours. As it was already 3pm,... Read more →

Auckland

On Thursday night we had an fantastic evening with our Tahitian friends (I feel like saying “family” now, we had such a warm welcome and have grown so close). They prepared a lovely, traditional Tahitian dinner. We prepared some of our own Swiss contributions (une tresse – ein Butterzopf in German – and a chocolate mousse), although these we left for our hosts to remember us by. It was with a heavy heart that we headed for the airport. Our flight from Tahiti to New Zealand left at 1:30am on Friday the 13th, but as we crossed the International... Read more →

Diving and Research on Mo’orea

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went scuba diving. Our son, Kalan, went both days: I accompanied him on Tuesday and my wife went on Wednesday. (Kalan is really passionate about diving, which goes along with his desire to become a marine biologist when he’s older.) Kalan has cut his teeth diving in Lake Neuchatel – where visibility on a good day is a few metres – so this was a great opportunity for him. I’m personally not such a huge fan of diving: I do enjoy it, but I’m really a landlubber at heart. This was a really enjoyable... Read more →

Tahiti and Mo’orea

After a slightly crazy week spent exploring the intricacies of the medical system in French Polynesia, we finally managed to relax and kick back for the weekend. On Saturday – after Anokhi was discharged from hospital, albeit with a minor, post-operative fever – we were taken on a drive around the island of Tahiti by our hosts. The weather wasn’t particularly good by Polynesian standards (it was just fine by Swiss standards ;-) but we still got the chance to see a fair amount of the island. We stopped for lunch at a popular surf spot, which also had... Read more →

Polynesian peanuts

We arrived in Tahiti late on Monday night after a very strange flight that left after midnight and arrived at 1:30am (and yet took 6 hours… timezones can be funny things). The kids slept through it all, give or take, which was one good thing. Our hosts – the family of Narii, a good friend back in Neuchatel – came to pick us up at the airport. An incredibly kind gesture, considering the arrival time. We spent much of the first day at their place, relaxing and recovering, although we did head into the centre of Pape’ete in the... Read more →

Easter Island

We flew from Santiago as planned on Saturday morning at 9:30am, arriving at lunchtime (with a couple of hours saving thanks to the timezone change) on Easter Island. Along with Machu Picchu and Iguassu Falls, this was another destination for which we’d prearranged a tour with the travel agency from whom we bought our round-the-world tickets. Which was nice: it meant we had airport transfers, a hotel and a full-day tour of the island all organised. A welcome change after the logistics we constantly battled (through our own choice, admittedly) on the South American mainland. Easter Island is our... Read more →

Valparaíso

We had a choice to make for our last few days in Chile. Do we head straight down to Santiago, to explore the capital city, or do we take the opportunity to head down the coast and explore the nearby port of Valparaíso? A good friend back home talks about Valparaíso as being the other side of the coin to Santiago: artistic, bohemian, funky and more than a little grungy. That appealed more to us than spending more time in a big city – especially as if we come back through Chile, at some point, we’ll almost certainly be... Read more →

La Serena and the Mamalluca Observatory

It would have been a shame to have come to Chile without a visit to an astonomical observatory: it’s one of very few countries in the world suitable for modern-day, ground-based observatories (i.e. it has the right altitude and low levels of light pollution). It’s the main reason we chose to head down the coast from Caldera to La Serena, as we could use that town as a base to visit the Mamalluca Observatory. This observatory aims at providing a great introduction to amateurs interested in astronomy: a great fit for our family. We arrived in La Serena during... Read more →

Caldera and Bahía Inglesa

After the excitement of the various deserts and salt flats we visited in Bolivia and Northern Chile, it was time for a break by the seaside. We’d decided to break our journey south to Santiago – from where we’ll be flying to Easter Island at the end of September – in a couple of places: Bahía Inglesa (a small town close to Caldera) and La Serena. We may yet also visit Valparaiso, if we have time, but that remains to be seen. We arrived in Caldera by a 12-hour bus ride on Thursday evening: we left at 7am from... Read more →

Sandboarding

On Wednesday – our last day in San Pedro de Atacama – we celebrated our second son’s 11th birthday (I can’t believe how time flies) with an outing to El Valle de Marte (Mars Valley) to give sandboarding a try. It was really a magical location for any activity. After the sandboarding tour operator’s bus took us out to the desert, we chose our equipment (snowboarding gear that has largely seen better days). Here are my boots, for example. It took me a couple of runs to realise they didn’t fit the bindings that well because these were reversed... Read more →

San Pedro de Atacama

We arrived on Saturday in San Pedro de Atacama by bus from Bolivia (the transfer was included in our tour of the Uyuni area). Interestingly the customs and immigration process wasn’t performed at the border: we had to stop and “be processed” on arrival in San Pedro. After that we endeavoured to find our Airbnb by foot, but given the lack of Google Maps data for the town, we quickly had to resort to phoning our host and having him send a van to the restaurant in which we’d taken refuge after schlepping our bags halfway across town. San... Read more →

Bolivia

Our trip up to Bolivia was long but interesting. We started off taking an overnight bus from Salta up to La Quiaca (both of which are in Argentina). We arrived at about 7am, at which point we carried our luggage across into Bolivia and had our passports stamped. We were then in La Quiaca’s sister town of Villazon, on the Bolivian side of the border. We were prepared for it being a little quiet, so we headed to what seemed to be the town’s only hotel and asked for a room for the day: our train northwards to Uyuni... Read more →

Pilgrimage to Salta

On our first trip outwards from Salta, heading north to the Quebrada Humahuaca – we were curious to see a group of people walking south towards the city. They had backup vehicles and even a police escort, but we didn’t think more of it than that. On the way back down we saw the same group, much further along, as well as other groups of pilgrims on bicycles. Pretty much the same thing happened when we headed south from Salta to Cafayate and then back: we saw several groups, some on foot, some on bikes, even some on horses,... Read more →

Cafayate

Our second side-trip from Salta (the first being the one up to Tilcara) was more southwards: we headed 200km along the amazing Route 68 to visit the town of Cafayate. Cafayate is well known for its winemaking, especially from the local Torrontés grape that only grows at altitude. It also has some of the most incredible scenery we’ve seen on this trip. On the way down to Cafayate the weather was really windy, and the closer we got, the windier it became. This meant we didn’t get to see all the wonders of Route 68. We did stop at... Read more →

Tilcara and Humahuaca

We thought the Cuestra de Lipán and the Salines Grandes were the best that this side of Salta had to offer: they were pretty spectacular, after all. We decided to visit the Pucará de Tilcara – a re-built, 12th century, pre-Incan settlement – and a village called Humahuaca thinking they’d be easy, gentle visits for our last day in the Tilcara region. We enjoyed the Pucará: it was interesting enough, although as we’ve been to Machu Picchu on this trip it was always going to be “just OK”. Many of the buildings had been rebuilt using traditional methods: Inside... Read more →

Salta and the Salinas Grandes

Since the last post, we took a daytime bus – lasting about 4 hours – from Tucumán up to Salta. This was actually quite nice, although at one point we sped past a traffic accident where I happened to look down into a burnt out car and saw the remains of the driver still in it. (Luckily I was the only one in the family who noticed this.) I admit it shook me quite a bit, especially as I get the feeling that such accidents aren’t all that rare, here. And given the fact we were due to rent... Read more →