On Thursday night we had an fantastic evening with our Tahitian friends (I feel like saying "family" now, we had such a warm welcome and have grown so close). They prepared a lovely, traditional Tahitian dinner. We prepared some of our own Swiss contributions (une tresse – ein Butterzopf in German – and a chocolate mousse), although these we left for our hosts to remember us by. It was with a heavy heart that we headed for the airport. Our flight from Tahiti to New Zealand left at 1:30am on Friday the 13th, but as we crossed the International Date…

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went scuba diving. Our son, Kalan, went both days: I accompanied him on Tuesday and my wife went on Wednesday. (Kalan is really passionate about diving, which goes along with his desire to become a marine biologist when he's older.) Kalan has cut his teeth diving in Lake Neuchatel – where visibility on a good day is a few metres – so this was a great opportunity for him. I'm personally not such a huge fan of diving: I do enjoy it, but I'm really a landlubber at heart. This was a really enjoyable dive,…

After a slightly crazy week spent exploring the intricacies of the medical system in French Polynesia, we finally managed to relax and kick back for the weekend. On Saturday – after Anokhi was discharged from hospital, albeit with a minor, post-operative fever – we were taken on a drive around the island of Tahiti by our hosts. The weather wasn't particularly good by Polynesian standards (it was just fine by Swiss standards 😉 but we still got the chance to see a fair amount of the island. We stopped for lunch at a popular surf spot, which also had black…

We arrived in Tahiti late on Monday night after a very strange flight that left after midnight and arrived at 1:30am (and yet took 6 hours… timezones can be funny things). The kids slept through it all, give or take, which was one good thing. Our hosts – the family of Narii, a good friend back in Neuchatel – came to pick us up at the airport. An incredibly kind gesture, considering the arrival time. We spent much of the first day at their place, relaxing and recovering, although we did head into the centre of Pape'ete in the afternoon…

We flew from Santiago as planned on Saturday morning at 9:30am, arriving at lunchtime (with a couple of hours saving thanks to the timezone change) on Easter Island. Along with Machu Picchu and Iguassu Falls, this was another destination for which we'd prearranged a tour with the travel agency from whom we bought our round-the-world tickets. Which was nice: it meant we had airport transfers, a hotel and a full-day tour of the island all organised. A welcome change after the logistics we constantly battled (through our own choice, admittedly) on the South American mainland. Easter Island is our first…

We had a choice to make for our last few days in Chile. Do we head straight down to Santiago, to explore the capital city, or do we take the opportunity to head down the coast and explore the nearby port of Valparaíso? A good friend back home talks about Valparaíso as being the other side of the coin to Santiago: artistic, bohemian, funky and more than a little grungy. That appealed more to us than spending more time in a big city – especially as if we come back through Chile, at some point, we'll almost certainly be passing…

It would have been a shame to have come to Chile without a visit to an astonomical observatory: it's one of very few countries in the world suitable for modern-day, ground-based observatories (i.e. it has the right altitude and low levels of light pollution). It's the main reason we chose to head down the coast from Caldera to La Serena, as we could use that town as a base to visit the Mamalluca Observatory. This observatory aims at providing a great introduction to amateurs interested in astronomy: a great fit for our family. We arrived in La Serena during the…

After the excitement of the various deserts and salt flats we visited in Bolivia and Northern Chile, it was time for a break by the seaside. We'd decided to break our journey south to Santiago – from where we'll be flying to Easter Island at the end of September – in a couple of places: Bahía Inglesa (a small town close to Caldera) and La Serena. We may yet also visit Valparaiso, if we have time, but that remains to be seen. We arrived in Caldera by a 12-hour bus ride on Thursday evening: we left at 7am from San…

On Wednesday – our last day in San Pedro de Atacama – we celebrated our second son's 11th birthday (I can't believe how time flies) with an outing to El Valle de Marte (Mars Valley) to give sandboarding a try. It was really a magical location for any activity. After the sandboarding tour operator's bus took us out to the desert, we chose our equipment (snowboarding gear that has largely seen better days). Here are my boots, for example. It took me a couple of runs to realise they didn't fit the bindings that well because these were reversed on…

We arrived on Saturday in San Pedro de Atacama by bus from Bolivia (the transfer was included in our tour of the Uyuni area). Interestingly the customs and immigration process wasn't performed at the border: we had to stop and "be processed" on arrival in San Pedro. After that we endeavoured to find our Airbnb by foot, but given the lack of Google Maps data for the town, we quickly had to resort to phoning our host and having him send a van to the restaurant in which we'd taken refuge after schlepping our bags halfway across town. San Pedro…