After a long journey we finally return home to a friendly dog and a pile of post. Although tired and jetlagged, we have stories to tell and it'll be great to fill you in on all of those when we catch up with you all. Cheers for reading this, hope you enjoyed it and we'll leave you with a final quote we picked up whilst we were away. "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius [View Full Entry]

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On the last leg of the trip now but are certainly going to make the most of the 4 days in San Fran! Pretty much landed and hit the town straight away in a mood to shop, shop, shop - and boy did we! The streets are lively and the buildings are high, there is only a population of around 800,000 people & only half of them seem to have a crazy imaginary friend that they shout at constantly. Theres wonderful architecture and recognisable buildings like Tiffanys and Bloomingdales were names we knew of but had never been in, so it [View Full Entry]

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" Come with us on a journey through time & space" We have just realised that we are time travelers!!!!!!!! Basically the way our flight times work with our time differences we leave Auckland at 19.30 today and arrive at San Fran at 12.45 today.... so even though when we get on the plane and have time for evening meal, 2 films, a quick single malt (complimentary) to knock us out, 1 sleep & a breakfast, we still go back in time!!!!! With this in mind we are proclaiming the 26th July as Groundhog day. We are planning to do as [View Full Entry]

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We had around 4 days to spend in Auckland the first night being in the van and then we upgrade to a real bed ! A bit of a change being in the city with a mix of cultures it wasn't that different to a European city. We've walked the streets, drank the coffee and ate the cake, and Jacky discovered a nice little Belgium bar serving her a kilo of Mussels in curry sauce, so she was happy. Museums and art galleries aside, we visited a little island only 10 minutes from the mainland by ferry, called Devonport which was [View Full Entry]

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Only about a week left in the van but still a fair bit of NZ to cover. We're spending a few days in Rotorua as it seems like quite a central place to do stuff from. The plan is to visit an island with active volcano's on, but it is weather dependent..... so we're not holding out too much hope. Headed for the tourist information and now have leaflets (Kat C you would be impressed) and tickets for this that and the other to fill in a few days. Started off going to the museum for a bit of a gen [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in the small town of Waitomo it was already very wet, but we figure that we were going caving so we were getting wet anyway. The selection of trips you can do here is amazing but we settled on one with the legendary black river rafting company. We got up nice and early and headed down to the caves to meet our guides and get kitted up. Most of the morning I spent reminding Jacky that this was her idea (As we applied layers of neoprene and donned our miners helmets !) The trip was a combination of 37m abseiling [View Full Entry]

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Having driven around 8 hours in the rain only to camp up in rain and then to hear that a lightening strike had hit the town we held out little hope of being able to do the helicopter trip onto Franz Josef Glacier that we had booked for the following day. But Mr Sunshine was truly on our side when we woke up in the morning. Having never been in a helicopter we were rather excited and it was not a disappointment, on the contrary it was so smooth, so swift Jon & I would like to use this mode of [View Full Entry]

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Had a quick stop over on our way to catch the ferry to the north island at these limestone pancake formations. We've not seen anything like these before and thought they were pretty cool. Naturally formed through hard/ soft layering formations of limestone. The sea has worn away a lot of the soft layers, creating the jagged structures as well as blow holes which look impressive when the sea lashes in and is forced upwards and outwards in a water cascade. The thing with NZ is everywhere you turn there is beautiful landscape and driving in the campervan gives you the [View Full Entry]

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It was Jackys influence that made us visit Napier, but I have to admit that when I heard about the wine tours I was swayed myself (obviously for the wine knowledge I would gain!). Napier is a city but appears more like a small town from the 1930's. Having suffered a major earthquake followed by severe sweeping fires the place was replanned and rebuilt by 4 archetects with an interest in Art Deco. It was designed so well and so in keeping with each other and although it went through a period of degradation today due to the tourism industry getting [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Queenstown and armed with a 3 day snowboard pass & a credit card for anything that does not suffice! Booked ourselves into a jetboat experience (well if it was good enough for Peter Jackson then its good enough for us!).... and it was. Whole hearted, bloomin good fun!!!! only way I can explain it is like a watery waltzer, lots of speed, lots of giggles and a heated hand rail, what more can you ask for! Jon's thought his all time favorite job was explosive technition (throwing dynamite from a helicopter to make sure that the snow on a [View Full Entry]

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