And so time for another photo blog of our year in London - 2011. Highlights were finally moving into the flat we bought last year and Oslo's arrival in the UK (now it really feels like home here!), Fe and Doug getting married, another trip for my parents over to the UK and Europe, the Gautrelet-Jack family welcomed little Louis into the world, Maria and Ty came to visit from South Africa, a variety of different day trips out of the capital, Fe and Bunny embarked on a whole host of different and random courses (thanks 'groupon!') and a whole lot of other great moments... then there was the sad times like when both Carl & Tori and Fe & Doug deserted us to head back to the Southern hemisphere... will let the photos speak for ... read more

The Seychelles. A place name that conjures up pictures of paradise; and it didn’t disappoint. Of all our travels around the world and I believe this is our 80th (ish!) country... this is the most stunningly beautiful we’ve ever visited. The spectacular granitic islands that make up the Seychelles archipealogical area are simply awe-inspiring. After an 11.5 hour journey from London via Milan we arrived on the island of Mahe on Saturday morning. Next up we entered the balmy tropical outside temperatures, walked across the tarmac and boarded a small plane for the first island of our visit – Praslin. When we say small, it was one of the smallest we’d been on excusing scenic flights across places like the Okavanga Delta or The Grand Canyon. It took us a little by surprise but was very ... read more

We flew into the airport at Nice and were immediately hit by the lovely, lovely heat! It was a beautiful day and we couldn’t wait to get out into it. We met up with Beth & Evan, Tish & Kent and Maurice (Beth’s Brother), picked up our rental car and headed down the beautiful coastal roads towards the Principality of Monaco, home of the rich and extremely rich. We parked near the epic Monte Carlo Casino and took in the stunning views out over the bay of Monaco, a vast array of incredible super yachts dominated the harbour. We figured we should take a closer look so we walked along the piers and goggled at the sheer excess of some of the yachts – you could almost smell the wealth. After choosing our favourites, we walked ... read more

Easter weekend. Our first holiday away since we flew back in from Africa and Oslo flew over in March... so we were definitely taking him with us. Not sure where to go at first, we finally found our spot after a few searches (thanks Google!) - Torquay in Devon. We'd heard great things about Devon and the so-called 'English Riviera' so sounded like somewhere we should head. I think we got the best Easter weekend weather in years, in either UK or NZ. It was stunningly hot summer weather and so we were really able to make the most of our weekend. We found a B&B right in Torquay that was dog friendly (one of the best things about the UK) ;-) It was walking distance to shops or beach in either direction. We spent the ... read more

Ah Nigeria: a country whose most famous export must be email scams. Its reputation seems to precede it - everyone’s heard about ‘dodgy’ Nigeria but it was time to have a look ourselves. The first afternoon we drove roughly 50km and were stopped a crazy 14 times by “PUS” – our nickname for ‘Police Unofficial Stops’ given that most of the ‘Police stops’ don’t appear too official at all. They are usually just nosy, want to look around the truck etc and though they are always carrying large guns and rifles, they are very infrequently in any sort of uniform at all. The shortest distance between two police stops was 47 seconds of driving time. One time they stopped us and wanted to check all our headlights worked.... whilst some of the most dilapidated cars in ... read more