Current location - La Paz, Bolivia. Altitude: 3,600m!!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Sooooooooooo... we are sadly leaving the beautiful Peru tomorrow so time to catch up on a few of the highlights/lowlights from our last 10 days here.

1) Arequipa Carnival

Seb dances with man dressed up as woman and Katie is dragged in to dance with 8 year old boy! It sucks being a conspicuous white person at a Peruvian carnival! But it was a great laugh anyway!!!



(Click on Katie for link to flickr!)

The streets really came alive as the town celebrated its anniversary... everyone lined the main square to watch the parades of crazy people, horses, llamas, alpacas, goats and donkeys dressed up in all different costumes and some crazy clowns who insisted on pulling us out of the crowd to dance with them, much to the entire square´s delight! The evening continued with one too many pisco sours and some hefty beer drinking and dancing and then the evilest of hangovers that kept me in bed for the whole of the next day! I blame the raw eggs in that pisco sour... Im sure that´s not right!
2) Arequipa - Santa Catalina Covent




This is a really amazing place... a complete city hidden behind high walls since the 16th century and only in the last 30 years open to the public. Now only a handful of nuns reside here but the rest of the convent has been transformed by wonderful relics and antiques to show how it would have looked when nuns lived there. It was a lovely way to while away a few hours wondering through the colourfully painted cobbled streets and poking your nose in all their individual "cells" as they are rather inappropriately called and imagining how the nuns would have lived there in total isolation form the rest of the city and wondeful World around them.


3) Trekking in Colca Canyon

This is an amazing place... over 4000m deep from the top of the highest mountain to the river down below, condors soaring about and sheer cliffs on all sides...

Our enthusiastic landlord, Yarda, from the Czech Republic failed in convincing us to take his guided tour of the canyon with "stop, take photo" oportunities galore... we decided we were big enough and brave enought to do a couple of days trekking without any help! We managed to get to Cabanaconde, the town were you start the trek, with no problem. Although we did manage to lock ourselves out of our bathroom. I had a dodgy belly so it was very important to be able to use the bathroom in the night you understand... After trying to pick the lock for about half an hour (it looks so much easier in the films, wheres that thin piece of wire when you need it?) we resorted to climbing in through a tiny and very high up window then I had to dangle my feet precariously to find the rim of the toilet and not land in it... awesome! Wierdly enough, we had just watched Mission Impossible 3 ... the same sort of thing really, just less bombs and explosions and stuff.



Anyway, we set off early in the morning, all pleased with ourselves that we didnt have a guide and got directions from a local, which took us directly over the edge of a steep cliff... brilliant. Dont we look clever now. An hour of scrambling about on the side of this stupidly steep cliff with a 2000m drop below us and we finally found our way to the place we were meant to start the walk on a very wide and obvious path looking path! We were a little embarassed to say the least, kind of crawling on to the path where others were serenly and smugly walking by, with their guides. Pah!

Down in to the valley we go, steeper and steeper, as the temperature got hotter and hotter. We stopped at the bottom by the river to munch our picnic ... a melon and some peanuts and raisons... mmm yummy. Then it was another 3 or 4 hours walking up and down the other side of the valley. Not as easy as it sounds with frequent toilets stops behind the nearest bush and the temperature at close to 30 degrees. But it was really beautiful, a little stream running along the path carrying the water for the local villages we passed through. With dramatic scenery all around, pretty idillic really.

We found a resting place at the "Oasis" in the bottom o fthe canyon, where there was a swimming pool, food and a bamboo hut to greet us.. nice place to spend the night!

The next day we had to set off and stupid o clock in the morning in order to get back to the top of the canyon to catch the bus back to Arequipa. So at 4.30am we started our slow ascent up 1000m to the top. One hour walking in the dark with only our trusty Petzl head torches for light... pretty cool really!

The bus back to Arequipa took us past tourist condor spot bonanza "Cruz del Condor" which is where we saw the magnificant birds from the bus, without getting up and without paying a penny (smug travellers not wasting money on tours to see big birds!).


3) Cusco and the magnificent but extremely expensive Machu Picchu


Cusco, tourist heaven, but still nice all the same. And we didnt get mugged or robbed or anything!

Did unfortunately surcome to a little organised tour of some of the Inca sights around the city. It would take about 3 years visiting one everyday to see them all... we started at about 1pm and finished at 6pm so you can imagine we only saw a couple, but they were cool all the same. Sachsayhuaman (yes it does sound just like sexy woman, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha how we did laugh and I know we were the first people to say that joke to our tour guide too, but after 30 years of doing the tours he still laughed, bless him), Qenqo, Tambomachay, and Pukapukara. All fine examples of the amazing Inca building skills. I wont go on about it cos its not really interesting until you see it and then you too would marvel at the huge rocks carved to exact size and shape to build walls with no mortar that have withstood hundreds of years of earthquakes and weather and Spaniards stealing everything and knocking everything down.
Then of course, we headed to Machu Picchu after much dithering about whether it was really worth paying the US$73 train ride and US$40 entrance fee to see some more ruins, but really it was something else altogether. Although we must eat nothing and sleep on the streets for the next week to make up for it! The train arrived in a town called Aguas Callientes, at about midday so it was too late to go up to MP so we decided to climb up a small mountain instead... jesus, forget the gym, this walk had steep ladders and scrambly bits and massive steppy bits carved out of the rock and took us about 1.5 hours to reach the top from where we got our first glimpse of the city in the misty distance. Amazing! (Have said that alot in this blog I know... need to look for new adjectives.)

Next day we, and about 500 other poeple who had the same ever so original idea, caught the 5.30am bus to get to MP in time to see the sun rise from Wayna Picchu (another hours steep climb from the main city site... our thighs are bulging by now as you can imagine!) We spent a few hours exploring the site, listening in on other peoples tour groups to try and glean some information from them cos we were too stingy to pay for a tour guide ourselves (god we are such scabby travellers arent we?!) Then we WALKED down the hill ($6 for the bus you know!) and collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the hill, dusty, dirty and very sweaty but content that weve now seen another of the new 7 Wonders of the World!


4) Earthquake

Of course, while we have been having this amazing time traveling about there are lots of people who got stuck in the horrible earthquake. We were really lucky but loads of others were not. In one of the worst hit towns, called Ica, about 80% of the buildings were totally destroyed... horrible. There are loads of ways to donate to the recovery effort if you want to... here´s a link to SaveTheChildren Earthquake fund but there are tons of others I´m sure.


NEXT: BOLIVIA!

Monday, August 13, 2007

Hola from Peru!

(click above for link to flickr)

Started our trip, as most people do, in Lima... another huge, sprawling, polluted capital. However we were actually quite pleasantly surprised by the city... it really isn´t as awful as everyone says! There are a couple of really nice suburbs which we explored during our brief visit. But ultimately, it is just another huge, sprawling, polluted city so we did´t hang around too long!

As it turns out, our chosen route is the one that most tourists seem to follow and has therefore been nicknamed the "Gringo Trail" by the Lonely Planet, but we didn´t know that cos we have the Footprint guide so we´ll pretend that we´ve chosen a really crazy individual trail and try to impress you all with our off the wall adventures!

After Lima we headed south on the incredible "Cruz del Sur" buses which are like travelling first class in an aeroplane... hostess service and cheesy dubbed american movies, bingo and the occasional Madonna music video to keep us entertained... Towards the large harbour town of Pisco. We came here cos we like the drink, but the town is not that great as it turns out so we didn´t stop here, we carried on to the beautiful Paracas on the edge of the Paracas National Park. Our hostal opened out onto the sea and was a really beautiful spot to spend the night. From here we took a boat trip (with about 100 other European, middle-aged tourists, but we won´t mention them) to the spectacular Islas Ballestas which are home to literally millions of birds nesting in huge colonies on the rock faces. Mums and Dads, you would have loved it! Even if you´re not a huge bird enthusiast you can´t help be impressed by the sheer volume of bird shit covering the island! Aparently they harvest it every 5 years cos it´s really good fertilser! Amoungst the birds we saw were a few very cute penguins and there were also tonnes of sealions lolling about too... we even saw one giving birth on a rock...very cool!

So next we hopped on another bus south to find this amazing oasis town of Huacachina. It is just like you imagine an oasis would be, surrounded by ENORMOUS sand dunes on all sides, a small lagoon supports life in this tiny village, which is mainly a tourist trap, but a very nice one at that! You can sand board, buggy or boogy board down the dunes, but we just chose to leap about in them like 5 year olds... so much fun! We also took the opportunity to catch up on some serious sunbathing... aaahh so lovely after lots of cold weather to finally catch a few rays!


After a very uncomfortable night bus onwards we have arrived in Arequipa which is at first glance verging on heavenly... we have read that the sun shines 360 days of the year ... who can complain at that! I hope we don´t catch the 5 days of rain in the year! We are staying in a wonderful hostal in a higglydypiggledy town house and plan on staying here for a few days for a festival celebrating the town´s anniversary... there promises to be lots of street parties and parades and drinking and dancing in the streets... quite nice timing on our part!

That´s all for now... carry on below for stories from Chile... now with pictures.

Lots of love from the slightly red-nosed katie and seb xxx

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Well hello again everyone.

We´ve had a slightly surreal week exploring a tiny bit of the incredibly long and skinny country that is Chile. Have spent most of it recovering form the most incredible jet lag either of us has ever experienced, but at the same time trying to make the most of our short time in this beautiful country.


We landed in Santiago last Tuesday at about 1pm after 16 hours travelling and a 14 hour time difference and just about 1 hour´s sleep... My sister´s wonderful friends welcomed us into their home with open arms and a bottle of Pisco sour... and another... and another... and another... 16 hours later, at about 5am, our heads finally hit the pillow! Phew!

Needless to say, the next day we were pretty wiped out, so after a quick guided tour of the main sights of the city, we went back to bed! On Thursday we managed a trip to the coastal town of Valparaiso, where we wondered about like zombies, trying to take in the wonderfully higgledypiggledy, colourful houses sprinkled all over the hillsides here.... slums built in and amoungst and alongside huge wealthy mansions and tons of interesting street art to look at. 15 coffees later we still couldn´t stay awake so we hopped on a night bus to travel south to the town of Pucon.

This place was a real surprise... we suddenly found ourselves in somewhere very similar to Switzerland ... surounded by snowy mountains, dominated by a huge volcano and streets lined with cosy-looking wooden houses. We settled into a lovely backpackers and then set off for the natural hot springs and spent a few hours soaking away the long bus journeys and jet lag from our tired old bones!

The next day after the most amazing night´s sleep in the comfiest bed EVER, we set off with a guide to climb up the volcano... as you do! Turned out not to be the best weather for it and although Seb made it very nearly to the top, the icy winds and rain approaching made it just a bit too dangerous to go to the crater. I didn´t make it quite as far but was pleased with what I managed as it was pretty tough climb with crampons and ice axes and everything!!

After another amazing 15 hours sleeping (I dont think I´ve ever slept quite so much in one week before!), we set off on another bus south to the island of Chiloé. It was dark by the time we got here, so we found a bed and climbed into it again!!!! The next day we hoped to see penguins and dolphins off the coast, but aparently they don´t hang around here much in the winter ... d´oh! So as it was absolutely heaving it down with rain ALL DAY, reminding us alot of Ireland infact, we pretty much spent the day curled up infront of the fire in our B&B reading, watching tv and drinking wonderful chilean red wine... it´s a tough life for sure!

Another night bus and we´re back in Santiago now to kill a day before flying to Peru. As I said at the start... it´s been a bit of a a surreal week... as it´s off season there´s not alot going on round here and we seem to have spent to most of the time travelling on a bus from one place to another!! However we will take away with us a warm feeling from all the wonderful Chileans we´ve met, who have been helpful and welcoming here and we look forward to exploring the north on our way back through after we´ve conquered Peru, Bolivia and Argentina!

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Hello Everyone!!


It's been a long time... we apologise but now we have been on the road again for a month and it seemed about time to fill you in on all that we've been up to! Brace yourselves cos it's a bit of a long one! (Click on the above piccie for link to flickr)

Where to begin? Well let's go back to NZ for a minute, our last week there was a real whirlwind, marathons... (Seb full marathon in 4h17m, Katie half mara in 2h07m)... knackered us both completely and left us with sore knees and old lady status for a few days. Then we had to pack up our flat and move all our stuff to kind friends who unwittingly agreed to keeping our stuff for us while we're away (sorry Hannah and Katie and David... hope it's not causing you too much inconvenience!! :)) Then of course there was much partying and goodbyeing to be done we managed a pretty god shin dig at the bar where I used to work and surprised ourselves that we had actually accumulated a few mates while we'd been in NZ!

So after this frantic week of non-stop-ness we arrived in Sydney on the 1st of July with our busy heads on and it took us a while to switch off and adjust the the complete lack of deadlines and time restraints that now stretched ahead of us... well it took us about half a day at least!


Sydney greeted us with it's wonderful Opera House and Harbour Bridge standing in suitably resplendent glory. The sun came out to greet us with a balmy 20 degrees and it was with pleasure that we stripped off a couple of layers of thermal underwear that had become our uniform in NZ over the last few weeks. After a few days floating about aimlessly we jumped in our "Wicked" camper van covered in heavily anti Bush slogans and headed up the coast. We had 2 weeks in this knackered old van with the doors hanging off and the wind whistling through the large holes in the floor and dashboard, but it surprisingly started up reliable as clock work each morning, except the 2 occasions where we left the lights on and had to push start the bloody thing... imagine "Little Miss Sunshine" only there was just me and seb and a couple of kangaroos trying to jump start the bloody great thing...

Anyway, our trip took us up the East coast, north of Sydney for a couple of days. On our first morning we went for a walk along the coast to stretch our legs and were greeted with the wonderful site of 4 humpback whales cruising up the coast on their migration journey north for the winter. Pretty awesome for a first day we thought, even if they were miles away... they were definitely there and blowing their spouts and stuff... very cool. Our next stop of any significance was in Tamworth "the country music capital of Australia, maybe even the world" and as luck would have it we arrived just in time for "The Hats Off Winter Country Music Festival". GOOD LORD we couldn't believe our luck!! Live country music was pouring our of every pub, bar and hotel in the town and after a few beers too many, we ending up doing some serious toe-tapping-thigh-slapping-hat-tipping-shin-digging dancing til the small hours. I'm not sure the incredibly serious country music fans around the room appreciated our cynicism but there was no-one in the place who joined in with more gusto than us 2!!

Next we headed west into outback territory good and proper (from Tamworth through Dubbo and on to Broken Hill for those of you who have a map handy!) and did some amazingly long drives across absolute nothingness, surrounded by the red earth and sparse shrub land you see in all the calendars... pretty cool though... and it wasn't too long before we saw our first kangaroos followed swiftly by about another 100 million... there were tonnes of them out there and they are massive and very bouncy! We spent a couple of nights out here in the complete wilderness, sometimes deceived by recent maps and brochures into thinking we would find beautiful lakes and oasis type places full of birds and wildlife, but they had long since dried up and we were surrounded only by dry shrub land and lots of knarly dead trees... awesome stuff all the same though. It was in one such place (Kinchega National Park) that Seb proposed to me under the starriest sky either of us had ever seen in our lives (but that's a story most of you have heard so I won't go into it again!) :)



A quick stop at Mungo National Park to see the stunning Walls of China - a massive crescent-shaped sand dune plonked in the middle of the otherwise completely flat desert, covered in amazing sand formations whipped up by 100s of 1000s of years of wind and rain. Then we decided to miss out Adelaide and head south to the coast and the Great Ocean Road, which as the name suggests is a great road that runs along the ocean... Seb and I are a bit spoilt though and had seen quite similar coastal ruggedness, if not better, in New Zealand so we took a few pictures and of course had a quick stop in Bells Beach (Q Point Break quotes... "knew you wouldn't miss a 50-year storm Bodie"... etc) and cruised on through to Melbourne where we spent about 4 days in the end. A really fun city with loads of incredible shops, museums, exhibitions, and quirky little suburbs to explore. We liked it here!

After this we flew to Hobart in Tasmania and had to hit the brakes quite hard as things run at a slightly slower pace in Tassie! We explored and conquered Hobart in about 3 hours with a rather unusual and lucky sighting of 3 dolphins and an enormous fat seal playing about in the harbour and then discovered there wasn't a lot else to do here so we caught the bus up to Launceston where we stayed with some old friends of my mum's (thanks Gilly). A quick day's tour around the city revealed another cute city without a huge amount to do! But the next day was brilliant cos we managed a day's skiing up Mt Ben Lomond. Fairly amateur stuff for Seb, but for me it was perfect as this was my first time on skis. Seb very patiently took me through the basics, but I picked it up quite quickly and was zooming down the slopes in no time, wiping out innocent bystanders in all directions! Brilliant fun!

The next day we hired a car (as there is NO public transport here at all) and drove over to the east coast to Freycinet Nat Pk where we had a stunning afternoon's hiking over a steep rocky pass to beautiful beaches and coves along the coast and even managed a paddle in the sea. Skiing to beach paddling in one day - awesome! Then it was back to Hobart with a quick stop to see where all the convicts had originally landed in Port Arthur Historical site - loads of old buildings with lots of convicty type stories attached to them.

So the story so far ends here and we are back in Sydney now, staying with my cousin (thanks Maz and Arron) and we are finally able to sit and do this massive blog up date! It's Seb's 29th birthday tomorrow which we are going to celebrate by watching the Simpsons movie, eating lasagna and possible drinking a couple of beers... I dunno!

Loads of love to you all and thanks for all your lovely messages and e-mails, we were really bowled over by all the kind words and wishes and congratulations being sent to us from all over the globe.

Katie and Seb

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

When the Cormiers met the Dunns…

Sounds like the title of a Winnie the Pooh story… Both sets of parents came, saw and pretty much conquered New Zealand over the Easter weekend… Katie’s parent’s in all their English splendour with sun hats, anoraks, amazing sunglasses, cameras, binoculars and huge mobile phone cases a permanent presence. Seb’s parents holding up the side for Germany with their amazing campervan trundling thousands of kilometers across the land, acting mainly as a traveling wine cellar, as they stopped only for the occasional cigarette break and to re-stock the grape juice and chocolate almond supplies! It was so much fun to have them all here and very sad to see them go again L. Oh well I guess that’s what happens when you live on the other side of the world!

So after they had all departed, we took to the road again for another week’s traveling and exploring, this time in South Island. Our first stop was to re-visit some of my old haunts (I did a 6-week stint, 10 years ago, picking apples in a tiny little town called Richmond, near Nelson). It was very nostalgic, we even managed to find the exact cabin that Georgie and I lived in for that time… surrounded by weird NZ seasonal workers with far too much hair and too few social skills…

From there, we quickly moved on to Abel Tasman to explore the beautiful unspoilt coastline of the national park. Apart from being eaten alive by sandflies, and having only seriously soggy sandwiches and pasta to consume on our 2-day trek, the scene was absolutely idyllic… kayaking to deserted coves and being followed by playful seals, then a casual trek further up the coast line to camp for the night. In our usual, highly organized way we didn’t think to check the tides, so some of the low tide routes that we took, turned out to be rather wet!!

The next day we put on our soggy clothes from the previous day, ate a soggy sandwich and continued for another days trekking up the coast. We were really lucky with the weather and had stunning sunshine the whole day. A water taxi took us back to the start at the end of the day, with a quick stop at the seal colony on one of the islands on the way back, this rounded off our trip nicely.

So, where to next… south, to the Nelson Lakes National Park. The weather took a turn for the worse here and as we arrived in total pitch blackness to the tiny town of St Arnaud (100 people live here!) it was chucking it down, so camping didn’t seem very appealing and we took a back packers for the night. The next day we did a bracing 3 hour trek up and down Mount Robert… slightly unnerved to hear a kid screaming “HELLO MISS DUNN” at the top of her voice, as we wondered past one of the rest huts up there! Bonkers… one of the children I teach in Wellington was climbing the same mountain as us (may I remind you we’re on South Island, in a National Park, up a bloody mountain) at the same moment as us… NZ is sooooo small!

Then we headed across to the west coast to an extremely exciting little town called Westport… not brilliant, used to be a mining town and has since rather become a nothingy kind of town. So after a couple of beers in a local tavern, surrounded by far to many people who looked like they could have come from Royston Vasey … “Are you local?” and a very wet night in the tent, we moved on down the west coast to Greymouth, driving along some of the most stunning coastal roads where the sea was really kicking up a stink and has created some amazing coastal formations for all you geology geeks out there!

Our next stop we decided would be Kaikoura, right over on the east coast, so we crossed the entire island that day in order to get there by night-fall. The drive was again absolutely stunning as we drove through the Kaikoura mountain ranges as the sun was setting… ahhh so romantic in our brown Honda accord, which is by this time absolutely knee deep in long car journey rubbish and smells like wet dog…

Anyway, we treated ourselves for the last 2 nights of our holiday by renting an ensuite cabin at a holiday park… it had a toaster and kettle and everything! Kaikoura is a town famous in historic terms for whaling, but since you’re not really allowed to kill them anymore, they’ve changed their tourist focus to just looking at the whales. Very nice if you’ve got the money, but both Seb and I have done a whale watching trip before and didn’t fancy it again! Instead we took a lovely stroll along the beach to look at the seals, which we could actually get really close to. In a rather David Attenborough moment, I crouched behind a rock to have a pee at one point and turned around to find a large seal rearing up on the rock just above my head… he didn’t seem too bothered, so we both just carried on our business!

Now we’re back home again and Seb’s back to work, while I have a few more days of the Easter hols left to write a blog and do other exciting things like washing, cleaning, cooking and food shopping… life is the same everywhere you go!

Lots of love to you all, keep those comments and e-mails coming… we love hearing from you.

Katie and Seb

Monday, February 26, 2007


Hello everyone!

Thought I'd just tell you all about our lovely weekend in Napier... basically a cool little town in the Hawkes Bay region on the East Coast of North Island. Most famous for wine, sunshine and Art Deco buildings. Awesome! If you're into any of those things and happen to be passing, it's definitely worth a visit!

This was Katie's birthday weekend so we treated ourselves to a B&B and an expensive and delicious lunch in a posh winery restaurant, and then a food and wine tour of the region. Of course I would have been happy with soggy, sandy sandwiches on the beach and sleeping in the car again, but you know, Seb insisted!!

Our tour on Sunday included a trip to a farmers market where you can try all the local yummy foods, a drive up to some beautiful view points and waterfalls, and then lunch followed by wine tasting at some seriously impressive wineries.



We've come home with a good nose, discerning undertones of rich berries with a peppery mid pallet, delicious with a slightly rare fillet steak...... after you've tried 7 or 8 different wines in a row they all start tasting like ribena to me! Good fun though and it felt like a proper grown up 28 year old's birthday!! Although we did also go out in town with some friends and just eat pasta and get drunk as per usual - so not that grown up really!!

Lots of love to you all,
Katie and Seb xxxx

Sunday, February 11, 2007

On the deck


On the deck
Originally uploaded by ktdunn.
Self portrait of the team...

Friends from the UK (Vic and Laura were in Welly over the weekend).
Had a great time with sight seeing and lounging in the sun.

Katie says I look like my dad in this picture...I just know I need a haircut!!!

Happy days,

Seb and katie


Ahhhh... isn't it pretty! That's wellington by night. The city keeps giving us more and more opportunities to go "aaahhhh isn't it lovely", especially now it's finally decided to be summer here. The last week we have had some really beautiful weather and managed to take a trip to a beach about 40 minutes up the coast. We had a picnic and slept in the car, all very romantic until the 15th time you wake up with the steering wheel jabbing in the side of your leg. Then you wake up in the morning feeling like you're in a greenhouse and in my case with extremely puffy ankles and you think maybe next time we won't be so lazy and we'll put up our tent! Check out the pretty sunset though...


We also decided it was a perfect day for kayaking, so we hired one of those big flat double ones that seem impossible to turn, until Katie gets in and apparently I lent WITH the wave instead of AGAINST it, or something, anyway, it turns out it is possible to capsize those bad boys!

So, in other news, Katie has quit her job at the pub as the kids went back to school last week and has already secured 2 days a week regular relief work at a posh all girls school down the road, see http://www.qmc.school.nz , which is all very exciting. I taught in a little year 1/2 class for a couple of days last week, and I'm in with some scary Y5/6 children tomorrow! All very good for the teaching experience but not so good for the nerves!

Seb has decided he needs to take up at least three new hobbies a week, has a bought himself a kick-arse fishing rod (which he hasn't got a clue how to use), has taken to doing some serious mountain biking, when he's not playing golf, or football or taking pictures with a passion! And of course he works a bit in between, so he's pretty busy all in all! We're both running a 7km race next weekend, so we are trying to get fit... we'll let you know how that goes.


Had a lovely weekend with Laura Crossley (an old school friend of mine who's working in Auckland at the mo) and a friend of hers Vic, who flew down to see us. Went to some wineries in Martinborough again and pretended to know some thing about all the wines we were tasting rather than just enjoying the free alcohol, did all the sights in Welly and generally ate lots of food and drank lots of wine, woohoo!

That's about it for now, keep in touch all of you,
loads of love,
Katie and Seb