Goodbye South America - Hello New Zealand

We've had a fantastic three and a half months in South America and visited some amazing places that we'll never forget, but we're not sorry to be leaving. We may be back again one day though as we still have the Amazon and the countries in the north to tick off.  We covered a lot of ground which meant a lot of hours spent just travelling from A to B which was sometimes quite tedious - we're very good now though at just sitting around/travelling for hours!   We also won't miss group travel which could be quite draining at times, although most of the people we travelled with were lovely we much prefer to do our own independent thing.   Independent travel though was not an option for us in South America due to the language barrier, which could be difficult at times.

We flew from Sao Paulo to Santiago where we were in transit for six hours before boarding our connecting flight to Auckland. Santiago was a lovely airport though, lots of shops to look around and nice restaurants so the time flew by.  We boarded our LAN airlines 10:40pm plane to New Zealand and then the fun began.  Soon after were told there would be a 50 minute delayed take off as they were still refuelling?  We sat for two hours on the plane waiting eventually to be told the flight was cancelled due to a technical fault and would be rescheduled for 3pm the next day.  We were all told we'd be put up in a hotel in Santiago for the night but the communication as to what to do or where to go was appalling.  After exiting through customs and collecting our baggage we finally found where to get a bus to a hotel. The bus driver though obviously didn't know where the hotel was as he stopped to ask directions a couple of times.  Our bus dropped us all at the Novotel hotel, much to the hotels surprise, they knew nothing about the cancelled flight!  We were near the front of the queue so easily got a room, not sure if the people at the back did though. 3:30am we finally got to bed.  One bonus the hotel was lovely and served a great breakfast, somewhere we never would have paid for as over our budget.  We were picked up at 11am the next morning to return to the airport. We checked in again and luckily the flight left without any problems on time.

We arrived in Auckland at 8pm, should have been 4am, 16 hours later than scheduled losing a day of sightseeing.  New Zealand customs are renowned for being strict, we had to declare our walking boots and tent because we'd been backpacking in remote areas.   They were very friendly though and quick.  Our tent was taken for inspection but returned ten minutes later, we were on the shuttle bus and at our hotel for 9:30pm.  It is so nice though to be back in a country that speaks English, drives on the 'right' side of the road i.e. on the left, has decent cups of tea and that has a proper sewage system so we can throw loo roll down the toilet again!  This takes a bit of thinking about, throwing loo roll into a bin for three and a half months had become routine for us.