This week was spent mainly in a small city on the East side of the North Island called Tauranga. Like I mentioned in my previous blog, we came across a great tourist park to stay at (complete with a hair dryer!) and so decided to spend our days there, while scoping out the job situation. While there was not a whole lot of luck with the job search, we did find some other interesting stuff to do while we were around the area. My favourite area was across the bridge from Tauranga - a place called Mount Manganui. It is a [View Full Entry]

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After only one full day in Auckland Brett and I decided that it was time to do some surf-chasing, so we stocked up on groceries and headed over to Whangamata, a little beach town on the Coromandel Peninsula. As Murphy's Law would have it, the ocean was completely flat, and remained that way (much to our dismay) for the entire four days that we stuck around - despite our religious checking of it each and every morning and afternoon. So, to keep the 'no waves' depression from sinking too far in, we came up with ways to entertain ourselves. We set [View Full Entry]

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While I realize that I have been a little slack on my blog lately, I have to say that the way I've been spending my time lately makes sitting in front of a computer seem a bit of a bore. But, given that it has been a while since my last blog I am kind of looking forward to sitting back and recounting all of the memories of the past couple of weeks... The week after getting back from my sailing trip seemed rather short (recovering took a good full day of napping) and was spent mainly around the Auckland area. [View Full Entry]

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This week found me getting quite involved with the New Zealand lifestyle... It started with a visit to the Auckland Museum, where I learned about the people of the South Pacific as well as the natural sciences familiar to the area (I even got to experience a volcano from the inside of a house!). I spent a very nice afternoon there learning about the various things and was sad to have to head out into the (relatively) cold, wet weather afterward. I certainly won't complain too much about the weather though, out of respect for those of you approaching winter. Wednesday [View Full Entry]

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After finishing up my last couple of days in Hawaii with a bit of surfing at Waikiki Beach, I flew out on Wednesday night heading for Auckland. Crossing the international date line meant that I didn't actually arrive in Auckland until Friday morning (meaning that I missed out on Thursday this week!) David (Truro/Auckland) was at the airport to meet me - how nice it was to see a familiar face. He headed off to work while I got cleaned up before walking down to Newmarket to explore. I met him at work and we headed of to Mission Bay for [View Full Entry]

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So, after a week of being wet on the Hilo side, I decided it was time to head back west to Kona. Besides, IronMan was approaching and I was signed up to volunteer for it... After a long (but free!) bus journey - the bus broked down and we had to wait an hour for the new bus to arrive - I arrived in Kona, along with my newfound friends, Johanna (Denmark) and Lena (Germany). I had previously booked a hostel to stay at, but they weren't so lucky. With the IronMan coming up in a few days, everything was booked [View Full Entry]

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Okay, It seems that I may not be all that good at keeping a travel blog... though I am going to try to update it weekly :) First and foremost, that you all so much for your comments - it is so helpful to hear from people I know and love when I am so far away. After a long day of flying and stop-overs, I made it onto the Big Island of Hawaii around 8 pm (3 am NS time, meaning that I was awake for a full 24 hours by this point) on Sept. 29th. I found my way [View Full Entry]

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As many of you know, I am nearing my departure date for my upcoming trip around the world (mainly the southern hemisphere, really). But, since I love Nova Scotia so much, I have made sure to spend much of this summer travelling around the province and absorbing its beauty (as cheesy as that is, it's actually true). So I figured that this would be a good way to test out my 'blogging' skills - hopefully I'm able to get a hang of it before I leave. Though now that I've started trying to add pictures, I realize that most of them [View Full Entry]

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