Yeah well, so much for promising a blog update soon eh?! Shortly after the last post we discovered we'd had a little miscommunication with the folk at Urban Vision and weren't expected for another week...this turned out to be a blessing in disguise all round as the guys at Ngatiawa (the community) were all down with a bug and we had been hankering after a little more time to see South Island. So, we hopped on a ferry and hot-footed it across the Cook Strait to Picton where we picked up a car and began a week of adventures, starting with one of New Zealand's famous tramps in Abel Tasman national park.

Before we get into that perhaps it would be good to fill in the gaps from the past month...after our last real entry in Arica, Chile we have covered quite a few miles. From Arica we headed down to the Atacama desert on another overnight bus (these were quite a feature of that week!) and arrived a little jaded in San Pedro in the middle of the Atacama salt flats - the most arid place in the world but not the driest. In case you are confused we can pass on the little lesson we had on the difference between the two! We made the most of our 36 hours there visiting the Valley of the Moon and Death Valley as well as bubbling geysers at dawn, hot springs and lakes with flamingo. From there we spent 24 hours on the bus to Santiago (yes, 24 hours; yes, one bus!) where we were welcomed by cousin Guy and his lovely family. The next four days were full of eating delicious food, drinking great wine and generally relaxing. It was great to sleep in a proper bed as well! Guy showed us around the winery where he works and we even got a serendipitous 'vertical' tasting of the vintage cabernet sauvignon! ('Vertical' refers to the comparison of various wines of the exact same type, but of differing years, and not to the position of the taster!) Fortunately or unfortunately we had to move on before we could get too accustomed to this way of life...Many thanks to all the Hooper Herreros for a wonderful few days.