The spoons weren't as successful as I'd hoped - 'fraid me'n'Mikey's not true criminal geniuses: a German guy spotted us and told the manager. It was quite funny that she was really confused about the whole thing!

Anyway, all we did today was take a bus to Cairns. But, we're exactly half way through our trip: eighteen and a half weeks done, eighteen and a half to go!

As I've been writing these diaries, there have been several things that I meant to mention but forgot at the time. Here are some of them, in no particular order:

• One evening we walked into the hotel lobby outside our room in Cuzco to see six uniformed and heavily-armed policemen sitting round a tiny televsion watching Peru lose to Chile at football.
• Marysol, our guide for the Inca trail being horribly embarassed when one of our group mis-pronounced the word for trout and asked for something she really wasn't expecting - it took her ten minutes to stop blushing.
• The army guy I chatted to on the bus to Puerto Natales saying, as we drove over a hill and saw the town glowing in the evening sun, "This is Puerto Natales. We live in heaven."
• Finding the money changing place in Easter Island closed despite us visiting within the posted opening times. A girl nearby said that it was closed, and when we asked if she knew when it would be open again she shrugged and said 'Local Time.'
• There were loads of people begging in Santiago. Most of them had no arms or legs, or, in some cases, neither arms nor legs, and were dressed in leotards for the best effect. It was a bit disturbing.
• Our guide for Hobbiton told us that before this job he worked for a company that was based in Shepton Mallet, England.
• An advert for a department store in Wellington - up to 30% off clothing, sleepwear and Manchester. Huh?
• Mikey chased me down the road in the car when I got out to take a photo of a mini-shipwreck. He even managed to look evil.
• On the Inca trail, one of the guys screamed in the middle of the night and tried to rip his tent apart because he thought there was an insect in there: it turned out that it was just his ethnic bead necklace touching his arm.
• In Chile, mayonaise and ketchup are sold in bags, not bottles or jars.
• Typical Claire comment, on seeing a beautiful picture of kayaking in the Abel Tasman national park: 'The water's so clear that the boats look like they're floating...' Generously, the guy I said that to said that he wouldn't have picked up on it if I hadn't explained.
• After consuming an entire bottle of Cloudy Bay Chardonnay Mikey looked at me and said with considerable seriousness, 'In my opinion, and as far as I'm concerned, being drunk is just a side effect of too much alcohol.' Wise words indeed.
• At the hostel in Arrowtown we had both wondered, independently, why there was a strange, orange picture on the wall. It was a mirror. The difference is, I wasn't going to admit it.
• An advert on Australian tv urging viewers to "Stir Uncle Toby's oats, first thing in the morning".
• I've been struggling with immigration forms because they all want me to tell them my occupation and I don't have one. I am tempted to make something up, and was thinking of writing 'amateur taxidermist' for the New Zealand form, until I was fined by customs. I'm considering sticking to slightly more truthful occupations from now on...