We arrived in Santiago on Wednesday 26th of March! How nice it is to discover a new country, continent and new language. South America is totally new for us and we already love the long evenings and nights here. It is probably the first country in our world trip where restaurants and bars can still serve you after 11pm ;-) So, we enjoyed Santiago for 3 days, during which we visited a bit of the city, welcomed Agnes' Mum who will be travelling with us for 2 weeks, met Bessie (thanks to our London friend, Miguel) and finally saw Denis, Agnes' cousin who is now living in Chile, travelling all around the country & South America, produce & sell jewellery with his very nice Chilean girlfriend, Isi. In this section you will see pics of Santiago but also our first day in Patagonia/Punta Arenas. We will stay here 2 weeks roughly before going back to Santiago. The atmosphere here in Punta Arenas is a kind of "end of the world" one, very cold, dry and windy...wild dogs in the "dead streets", old houses, and a nice view on the detroit of Magellan...Check out the usual sections for more pics such as Chile. Tomorrow we are heading to Puerto Natales, the Torre del Pain national park, its glaciers etc.
After Tongariro, we headed North, to visit Rotorua, its hot pools & geysers, went to Bay of plenty to relax and surf, went to Auckland to sell our van (what we did successfully in 2 days for a slightly higher price ;-), and then headed even up North to visit Bay of islands to keep on surfing and....glaglagla...skydiving from 12,000ft (roughly 3,700m) with 44seconds of free fall! Agnes registered me 3 weeks ago without my consent. She asked me: " Do you want to go skydiving? I said: No. She said: Too late, I just paid"....I have been scarred and excited for the past 3 weeks, what a relief...but also what a joy!!! It is such a great experience....we clearly want to do it again and probably will do anytime we will have the opportunity...We now have 6 days left here in NZ. We will finish our trip in a region called Coromandel...to keep on surfing...Life is hard...but more importantly exciting! Check out the skydive video (the youtube video was available in France for a week but due to music protection (Sacem), it seems not to be working anymore in this country only...If you are from another country, feel free to click here to try my own video or, click here to see the new Youtube video from the Skydive company featuring myself and Agnes and a few pics under the usual sections: New Zealand, Foodies, Portraits and See us.
My god, we feel so lucky once again. After spending a few days in Wellington (south of North Island), we headed to the Hawkes Bay to try to find a job in a vineyard/winery. And what a success!! We went to Crab's Farm winery created and managed by Hamish since 1987.They own a few parcels which produce Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Rose, Merlot (like a Bordeaux powerful wine)….Again we could not be part of the harvesting as this was due to start in one week time so we did some gardening (one of our specialities from now on…;-). We spent some amazing time with Hamish, his Cafe staff (where we were spoilt with free food like mussels, scallops etc) and his wife, Dominique and her son Salvador. We also had the chance to spend one day at their very relaxing home….Thanks Hamish for everything and the home made wines and Brandy bottles ;-). After this we headed straight away to the middle of the North island to the Tongariro National Park to do some tramping (trekking). What a scenery we had there under a perfect weather….the volcanos, the lakes, the toxic fumes, its colors etc….Check out our pics under New Zealand, Foodies and Portraits. We now head North to visit Rotorua & its geysers and the Bay of Plenty coast.
