We stopped for lunch in Geelong and chatted to the guy in the information centre who, despite 22 years in Australia, still had a thick Middlesbr…

I love Melbourne. We'd heard loads about how cool and cosmopolitan it was and it certainly didn't disappoint. In fact, we were quite reluctant to lea…

Some cheeky bargaining and feminine guile managed to bag us a hotel right on Cathedral Square, and scored a room overlooking the square!   C…

Deep in MacKenzie country, you can't go too far without coming across bright blue-turqoiuse 'rock-flour' lakes and waterways. And th…

Ofter referred to as the Edinburgh of the South, Dunedin is a reasonable sized city by NZ standards with more than a hint of a Scottish influence. …

Queenstown's a fantastic place to spend a few days. You couldn't ask for a more picturesque spot for a town, right on lake Wakitapu set against the…

The lure of Franz Josef and Fox, on the central west coast of the South Island, are the glaciers. It seems that the townships themslves are only re…

We arrived into Wellington on friday at around 4pm and hunted for accomodation, frustratingly, for over an hour. Finally we bit the bullet and spli…

Ohakune sits at the bottom of Mt. Ruapehu and is a resort town, serving the snow-bunnies throughout the winter months. It has some great views of M…

The next morning we were away early and en route to Mt. Ruapehu. We visited Wai-o-tapu thermal reserve to see Lady Knox geyser (cheekily set-off arti…

Southbound early to meet Mam and Al's friends' son on the waterfront in an English pub in Brown's bay, North Auckland. I had my first taste of the …

After breakfast Al and I headed out of town to pick up our wheels for the next four weeks and rolled back into town with a dubiously-named 7-seat T…

And so with fantastic tans, it was onwards to Auckland. We were lucky enough to meet a lovely couple on Bounty Island, Ken and Sue w…

A few pics from our tour of the 40-or-so big cats in the Zion Wildlife Park. 

Bounty Island: Easily the closest to paradise we've been so far...   Bounty: Love island resort! If you've ever fancied wandering around the …

Waya/Sunset: Much more like the Fiji we were hoping for; we arrived to singing and dancing and shortly after setting down our bags we were involved…

We learnt a valuable lesson when we arrived at Nabua lodge: Don't let the friendly guy at the airport talk you into going to where 'everyone's…

BULA!!! I don't think I'm ever going to forget that word. Especially as Em keeps shouting it at me randomly and asking me to do the Bula dance, whi…

If there's one place on this trip that instantly struck us as somewhere that we might be able to one day live, it was Hawai'i. Admittedly, we didn'…

I can't recommend this place enough. The guys at DCX surf school in Waikiki are friendly and welcoming from the start and put you very much at ease. …

Woo hoo, Las Vegas for me meant it was time to meet my parents who had text me a few weeks before to let us know their flight details. After a nigh…

The trip to Lima took a few hours on a local bus and we arrived into a sprawling city bathed in late afternoon sunshine. Our transfer took us out o…

We arrived at the oasis of Huacuachina late morning, ready for our dunebuggying and sandboarding adventure. The dunes are amazing, and it seems mor…

The overnight bus to from Arequipa to Nazca started well enough. We had fully-reclining seats on the top-deck of a pretty plush coach, and were ser…

Monday started early. We left our big packs in the hotel and took small packs with enough stuff for a couple of nights. We were off to Colca Canyon…

We had one more night in Arequipa. Arriving back into town at 2pm, we realised we'd left the battery charger for the camera back in Cusco, so in a …

We only had an evening in Arequipa before heading out to Colca Canyon. We had a quick wander around the city and in the evening went f…

We were back in Cusco after an excellent four days on the inca trail, and still slightly scarred from the train journey, headed to the Paddy Fla…

Day one We awoke at 6am to beautiful surroundings and the backdrop of a snow-capped mountain. The porters were busily preparing our breakfast and af…

A few pics from our visit to Pisac.

We met Henry, our guide who would show us around Inca sites in Pisac and Ollantaytambo before taking us along the Inca trail and finally Machu Picchu…

The best laid plans... Before our trip we’d spent a lot of time with our STA travel contact, ensuring that my friend Steppy’s Inca Trail trip wo…

We were up early to get our bus to Lake Titicaca, across the Peruvian border and on to Puno. After some tearful goodbyes to Chad and Michelle we got …

Just a few pics from our very brief stop here. See next entry for more.

Saltenas are surely the best way to start the day. They’re like a miniature, gloopier and spicier cornish pasty and taste fantastic. We were back i…

“How would you describe Cochabamba?”, I asked Chad. “Like a very run-down sucre” he replied. Excellent. He wasn’t wrong. Cochabamba was …

A much more agreeable coach journey ��" a mere 3 hours and on paved roads too ��" took us to Sucre, much lower in elevation and noticeably wa…

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear me-ee... well no, not really. The good news was that the Potosi miners (clearly loo…

Today we were Bolivia bound with an early coach pickup that would take us to the border. Within twenty minutes we were stamped out of Chile and onwar…

When I awoke at 10am on monday morning we were 12 hours into our journey north and I'd slept far better than any night in La Serena. A look out of th…

Knowing that we had an 8-hour coach journey north on Friday and had to be up and ready by 7am meant that I spent Thursday evening in the only sensibl…

After an extremely long overnight flight (including a re-fuel in Lima) we arrived into Santiago completely shattered. We found our transfer to Bellav…

After a few more days on the road and having time swallowed up on LA's freeways, we were in need of some relaxation and, much more importantly, a tan…

I don´t know what all the fuss is about. Hollywood´s a dive, and driving anywhere in LA is risking your life. We drove from Santa Barbara thro…

Santa Barbara's just stunning. We drove in at night-time along the coast and quickly found a great hotel on Bath St. It had a hot tub so we indulged …

Saturday came and we were sad to leave San Francisco. It had been a fantastic four nights in a city that really lives up to the hype. But we had to m…

Having stopped at Leggat for breakfast and some pretty pricey gas it was onwards down the coast to San Francisco. Being in Redwood National park&nbsp…

After much debate, we decided that Oregon was far too big for us to be able to visit Crater lake and get all the way back up to the Sea-lion caves wi…

After a night out in Portland there was only one thing that would see us through the day, another Denny´s grand slam! Having shaved a good few …

Portland Rocks. Not only was the eternal and infernal optimism of LP vindicated this time, we´d heard it from a lot of people in Seattle too. so, na…

All I knew about Seattle was that Frasier was based here and that it´s principal tourist attraction, the Space Needle, was an extra from the Je…

14 hour overnight coach journeys aren't the stuff that good sleep and fresh mornings are made of, so as you can imagine, we weren't on …

Disclaimer: These pictures do no justice to the beauty of the Rockies.It all started in downtown Calgary around midday. Picking up the hire car on 6t…

Back in Calgary, we were far too weary to do anything other than sleep. Fresh powder is as tiring as it is fun and we needed very little convincing t…

What a day! The powder gods didn't disappoint, delivering around 30cm of the finest snow I've ever experienced to a glorious Sunshine. Rich and Li co…

After a few weeks on the road, a night of sleeping (sort of) in Toronto airport and a 4hr flight we were in need of a friendly face or two. Luck…

Back in Toronto we had an early start and a busy, touristy day ahead. The sun was shining and it was a perfect day to see for miles from very high up…

"Apparently Niagara Falls is popular with newlyweds and nearly-deads, according to the book" I said. "In fact, it's even been called 'Viagra Falls'".…

After another 4 hour bus journey we arrived in Toronto on a pretty dull Thursday afternoon. We got the subway and found the hostel pretty…

We reached Kingston at about 7.30pm on Monday and set about working out how to get to the hotel, a 'Super 8 Motel', similar to Travelodges. A shock w…

Having so far been impressed with the cities we've visited, we were expecting great things from Canada's capital. In fact, Ottawa was a bit of a…

Thursday's mammoth coach trip wasn't as bad as we'd thought. It took us through some great scenery and attractive little towns in New Hampshire …

Searching for digs the day before heading to city is a mistake we've made early on and one that won't happen again. On top of that, the third mo…

After an OK flight and a long hot subway ride, we finally arrived at our hotel on the upper west side on Thursday at around 7pm NY tim…

Welcome to our blog. The plan is to travel round the world in eight months. We'll be starting from New York and seeing some more of North Ame…