Oh my God I can't believe it...

I've never been this far away from home (for all you Kaiser Chief fans!)

We arrived in NZ yesterday morning at about 6am, after a 13+ hour flight from Argentina. From Argentina we had to first fly back to Santiago, Chile, our flight was 11:40am so we were up early packing all our stuff up and enjoying our last Argentinian breakfast of coffee and croissants (hmmmm!) We took a taxi to the airport as it was 35km from Buenos Aires so we didn't want to chance Public Transport. Our flight was no hassle, there was a bit of confusion with our flight though as it had changed from the original booking and everybody was sending us in different directions to get checked in, we eventually managed it and headed off to the departure lounge. The flight to Chile is only 2 hours so we seemed to be getting off just as we were getting comfortable. Once we got to Chile we had to go through more security checks and through the "In Transit" section back into another departure lounge to wait for our NZ flight. The only downside to this was, our next flight wasn't departing until 22:45, which was made even worse by the fact that when we got to Chile we had to put our watches back an hour because of the time zones in America. It was a long long day, has anybody ever seen the film Terminal with Tom Hanks??

The flight to NZ was a bloody long one, we were both tired after being up all day and just sat about so we were looking forward to getting some shut eye on the plane. When we boarded and got into our seats it was quite obvious that we were in for a very uncomfortable flight, the plane was tiny for a long haul trip, we both agreed that we had been on bigger flights to Europe. I haven't got particularly long legs but even I was cramped. The flight was full too, we were packed in like sardines! But there wasn't a lot we could do so it was a case of grin and bear it. The in flight entertainment was good with loads of good films and games and it was good to be back among so many English speaking people again (even if they were all loud mouthed Ozzies!!) The flight was really bumpy too, we had constant turbulence for over 2 hours. Im not a nervous flyer (unlike Matt who isn't too keen) but I have to say it's one of the longest and most uncomfortable I've ever been on.

It got dark in Chile at about 6pm on Friday and we didn't see daylight then for about another 15 hours, because you cross over the date line too on the way to NZ we lost a whole day. We were totally disorientated when we landed (still in darkness) and mentally and physically exhausted.

We got through the tight Passport Control without any real hassle, the Kiwi's really are friendly people, and it was all "good on ya" kind of banter all the way through. We did get our shoes checked and asked if we had any feathers or "raw hide" in our back packs!! So once we got out of the airport we were as excited as we could be considering our mental state, we were a pit pi$$ed off as we couldn't check into our hostel until 8am, and even then couldn't have our room until 11am (which actually turned out to be nearer 1pm!!) as there was somebody still in it. From the airport we took the "cheap" bus, there were a few options of getting to the hostal but we decided that because it was English speaking that we would take the bus, if we got lost we could quite easily ask somebody the way, ask the bus driver to tell us where to get off etc, all the things that we could never communicate to people in Sth America because of the language barrier.

Once we got our room we had a shower and unpacked our stuff (all in desperate need of washing!) We didn't want to go straight to bed as we knew we wouldn't sleep in the evening, I had quite bad motion sickness from the flight though and still felt like we were on it, it was a weird feeling. We went for a walk in the area where were staying which is Parnell Road. It's full of restaurants and pubs, heaven. They all speak English and the majority of restaurants are Indian and Thai. We could probably spend the whole 7 weeks here quite happily ;-) We headed for an Irish Bar, The Bog as they were doing a Sunday Roast and we had really missed not having one since we left in May. So we had a BIG belly buster, a couple of pints and watched the local Rugby League (a perfect afternoon for my dad!!) it was after the alcohol that we really did start to tire. So we headed back to the hostal at 3pm, got into bed and slept until 7am this morning!! We both feel much better for it.

Obviously we haven't seen a great deal yet so theres not a lot to tell you, we get our Camper on Wednesday and were heading straight off up to The Bay Of Island, where the beaches are superb (90 miles long) it is also a couple of degrees warmer "Up North" The weather is much milder than Argentina (which was freezing!) but it is only Spring here so were not expecting any heat waves, we will have to wait for Fiji for the beach wear to come out.

We wont be blogging as regular in NZ as most of the time we will be on the road and hopefully in the middle of nowhere, and obviously because were not in hostals there will be no free internet. I know this Camper Van we've hired is a good one with all mod cons but I don't think it included internet access!