Frandrew

Hi everyone, have been in US a few days now, stayed a night in downtown LA and Hollywood (walked down the avenue of stars) before setting off on the drive to San Francisco. A bit far to go in one day so had a night over in Monterey and had some very nice seafood!! Great to be driving and independent after so long sticking to bus timetables, only annoyance is paying tax (anything from 7-15%) on top of every listed price whenever you buy something, which you always forget to take into account. What a stupid system!!!! Now in San Francisco, going to see the Goldengate bridge today and a tour to Alcatraz tomorrow before heading off to stay a few nights in Yosemite national park and do some walking amongst waterfalls, mountains etc. Internet access ... read more

To get to the South Island we had to get the Interislander ferry from Wellington to Picton which took about 3 hours which wasn't as bad as it sounds as the there are some nice views as you approach the south island through the Marlborough sounds and also we saw some dolphins up close along the way (in fact we were closer to them than when we went on a dolphin spotting cruise back in Australia!!) Once we reached the South Island the weather was already much better than on the north island and it wasn't long into our drive to Nelson before we started seeing the even better scenery Fran had said to expect!! We were in Nelson for just 2 nights and decided just to take it easy and just did a bit of ... read more

So our next stop was Brisbane where we were finally in sunny Queensland. And sunny it was!! We booked ourselves into a little (very little) hotel, but it was right in the centre of everything. We were told bad things about brisbane but we actually really loved it here. There is a nice water front where you can do lots of people watching, botancal gardens, a place called southbank which has a man made beach/lagoon and a bustling town centre. What more could you need from a city. We only stayed here a day or 2 before it was time to move on and up to Hervey Bay. We mainly stayed here as this was the place where we needed to catch our ferry to Fraser Island. Based on bus times etc we ended up staying ... read more

Late on our last night in Pretria we got the call from our tour guide to say we would be getting picked up at 5.15am!!! We hadn't realised when we booked that Kruger is a good 6 hours drive from Pretoria, add in a couple of hours for picking other people up from Joburg and we had been on the bus for 8 hours before arriving at our camp site. Bearing in mind this had been sold to us a permanantly erected tents with beds inside we were a bit miffed to be shown to a crummy 2 berth tent with wet mattresses inside due to the heavy rain from the previous days. This coupled with about 50% of our clothes being soaking from being in the trailor (seems things which are supposed to be waterproof ... read more

We have arrived finally and on time with no problems. We got to our hostel at 10.30 am, which was way too early to check in so we headed to the bar for a beer! First thing we noticed in the beer garden was Table Mountain in front of us which was a good start. Spent most of the first day looking into trips for the week ahead, then we went for a look around. Its not like anywhere either of us have been before and took a while to get used to. There is a strange sense of intimidation until you realise its just a different way of life. We havnt actually seen any problems as such. Just took a while to get used to it. Hostel is nice. Got everything we need and is ... read more

Still in the UK at the moment, this entry is just to activate our blog so that it can be found by those searching for it.... read more