Kirsty and Rob

Hello everyone, well we have almost come to the end of our time in Aotearoa New Zealand. And it wouldn't be complete without one last short blog. In our last blog we were at the tip of the South Island and we were very reluctant to leave. We fell so in love with the South Island that the North Island seemed like a foreign country. It certainly has some cool parts, but not the breathtaking scenery in such abundance as the South. After leaving the Abel Tasman national park, we delayed our departure from the South in the little port town of Picton, where you catch the ferry over to Wellington. We stayed at a gorgeous hostel called the Sequoia lodge, which apart from being very laid back and comfortable, had a real cedar spa and ... read more

Vanuatu is a country we didn't know very much about so were itching to get there and explore. What we did know is that the third world country is melanesian, not polynesian, their official language is French though most people speak pidgin English, and that it has been voted "happiest country on earth". We were welcomed at the airport by a local string band singing songs about Vanuatu. The songs were fantastic, although they gradually all began to sound very similar. Not to worry, this did not detract from the enthusiasm of the eight male singers and musicians who sang of their beloved homeland, keeping time with a consistent left to right stepwise dance. They wore custom dress, ususally a long colourful smock, and floral head dress. Their instruments included a bass string instrument fashioned out ... read more

sorry everyone, Travelblog crashed reciently and lost the text information for this blog. Luckly the pictures were saved. Until we recover the text, you might have to just browse the pictures for now and guess at where we were and what we were doing. (the pictures are the good part anyway) ... read more

Hello again, we hope 2007 has got off to a good start for everybody! First of all, a big shout out to some friends who have recently embarked on travels of their own: Dan dodging danger at every turn in Guatemala, and Jeannot and Tony on their 'am-asian' adventure (still funny!). We are enjoying reading your blogs so keep them coming! As for us, we continued to make the most of the Christmas break, and set our sights on Wanaka in Central Otago. It's somewhere we've wanted to visit since we got to NZ, and it's somewhere we were thinking about living and working over the winter. So we thought we'd check it out. We set off late afternoon last Friday, and planned to stay until Sunday. Most of the trip was the same route as ... read more

Merry Christmas from Queenstown! Here is the second part of our Christmas update (if you haven't read our previous blog you should do that first) Kirsty and I had a fantastic time in the adventure capital of the world, Queenstown. We decided to get out of Dunedin, and after work on Friday, we drove into central Otago the 3 1/2 hours to Queenstown. The drive was beautiful, as central Otago has some stunning scenery. Although Kirsty slept through a lot of it, I was having a good time taking in the landscape. A lot of the area is very desolate, with rocky hills and mountains, the schist rocks protrude from the ground everywhere giving it a broken look. If you have seen the lord of the rings movies, this is where they filmed the scene at ... read more