After nearly 7 months of backpacking we decided it was holiday time. We treated ourselves to a week at the Warwick Resort and Spa which is on the main Fijian island of Viti Levu. We had a great time relaxing by the pool, snorkelling and polishing up on our tennis skills! Oh and we played a bit of table tennis too (but I didn't have too much success with that one). The Fijian's are probably one of the most relaxed groups of people I've come across to date. 'Fiji time' is definitely not in line with the rest of the world. [View Full Entry]

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Hey, So we left Cairns and headed for the red centre. We took a flight into Alice Springs- flights are kinda handy in a country this size :-) Despite the searing heat (45 degrees Celsius in the shade) and an unimaginable number of flies we had a great few days exploring the outback. We spent one night in Alice before departing on a 3-day outback safari with 'The Rock Tour Company'. There's not a whole lot to report about Alice- its a fairly small town with a large Aboriginal population and the starting point for most tours to Ayers Rock (Uluru). [View Full Entry]

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After 2 fun filled days battling the sandflies and the immense crowds in Mackay we decided to head for Airlie beach. Our first impressions of Airlie beach were good - there were loads of people around and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Despite its name there's not much of a beach there but there is a beautiful lagoon, which more than made up for it. We stayed for a couple of days before heading out on a 2 day 2 night cruise on the Whitsundays. The trip was pretty good. Good snorkelling, great food and a good crowd of people [View Full Entry]

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Hi again, So we've made it as far as Mackay and yes the heat and humidity, along with a few tropical thunderstorms are beginning to make the camping thing pretty tough. We left Brisbane to head for the Sunshine Coast, but it still being school holiday time accomodation was pretty hard to come by along the beach and so we ended up spending two nights in Nambour which is about 20 minutes inland. It didnt really bother us as there wasn't a whole lot of sunshine around anyway. We stayed in a 'Rainforest' campsite for 2 nites and got a little [View Full Entry]

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Our hire car collected we left Sydney to make our way up the east coast. We got a nice surprise when we went to pick up our car- they didnt have the car we had reserved and so we got a bigger one instead! Our first day involved a slight detour out to the Blue Mountains as we hadn't actually managed to make this trip while we were in Sydney. It's a pleasant enough area, but the highlight (or lowlight) was seeing our first snake in the wild. We were walking a trail to see the Three Sisters and I stopped [View Full Entry]

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Well the last two weeks have definitely been a different Christmas experience for us! Apart from the odd Irish person in South America and Mum and Dad in New Zealand we hadn't met any other Irish people on our trip. So getting to Sydney was strange- the city seemed to be full of people from home. It was great to see some friendly faces. Sydney at Christmas time is cool- there was a great atmosphere around, although I'm guessing this city never really lacks atmosphere. We defintely made up for our relatively quiet social life since we left Ireland. We pretty [View Full Entry]

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And so on to the South Island... We arrived in Picton and headed south down the east coast. The landscape was a whole lot different to the North Island so we had a fairly leisurely drive down through the wine region as far as Kaikoura. Unfortunately the weather was miserable when we arrived in Kaikoura and so our first impressions weren't great, but we decided to stay put for the night anyway. I think it was either a little early in the season or the weather had just scared everyone away but the place seemed a little like a ghost town. [View Full Entry]

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Eventually we touched down in Auckland airport (after a 5 our delay in Santiago) and we picked up our camper van from Jucy rentals. We didn't know what to think of our new home but we've become quite attached to it over the past few weeks and we wouldn't swap it for a room in a 5 star hotel! Anyway after meeting up with Carol's parents in Auckland we headed north. We stopped in Whangarei (half way between Auckland and the Bay of Islands) for the night and then visited the waterfall the following day before continuing north. Driving in convoy [View Full Entry]

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So we flew from Rio to Santiago on the 13th November. (Only 5 days left in South America... where was the time going to). We left Santiago straight away and headed for Mendoza- the home of Argentinian wine. The bus journey from Santiago to Mendoza is through/across the Andes and is pretty cool except for the most painful border crossing of our trip so far. What should be a 5 hour journey takes almost 8 because of all the formalities at the border. Customs officials inspected every single piece of luggage on the bus! Anyway we arrived in Mendoza and got [View Full Entry]

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We took an overnight bus from Curitiba to Foz de Iguazu to see the famous Iguazu falls, the widest waterfalls in the world. Describing the falls as spectacular is an understatement to say the least. The sheer power and thundering noise of the falls is overwhelming, you really have to see them to believe them. The falls can be explored from both the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side and everyone recommends seeing both sides to get the complete experience. I couldn't agree more. After arriving in Foz, a bit tired and groggy after the overnight bus journey (Brazilian buses are [View Full Entry]

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