Mandy&NathRTWtrip
Mandy Nath
Mandy and Nath's around the world trip
(AKA "The come back skint tour")
Nathan Jones - Editor
Mandy Talbot- up and coming reporter
THE ROUTE:
USA:
Washington
New York Niagara Falls (Canadian side) Torronto Chicago Denver Salt Lake City San Francisico
San Louis Obipso Santa Barbara Los Angeles Las Vegas 
Flagstaff Yosemite Lake Tahoe
San Francisco Los Angeles FIJI:
Nadi
Coral Coast Waya Lailai Eco resort Manta Ray Island resort Otto & Fannys Oarsmans bay lodge NadiNEW ZEALND:
Tauranga
Auckland Paihia New Plymouth Hahei Tongariro Rotorua Napier Wellington Picton
Kaikoura Portage Nelson Golden Bay Takaka Able Tasman Kaiteriteri Nelson Lakes Hokitika
Frans Josef Wanaka Queenstown Milford Sound Dunedin Omaru Mount Cook Christchurch AUSTRALIA:
Melbourne
Great Ocean Road and Granpians NP Tasmania Canberra Sydney Blue Mountains Newcastle Port Macquarie
Coffs Harbour Byron Bay Brisbane Maroochyrore Fraser Island Rockhampton Mackay Whitsundays
Townsville Cairns Great Barrier Reef Cape Tribulation Port Douglas Darwin Kakadu NP Alice Springs/Ayers Rock
Sydney HONG KONG / CHINA:
Hong Kong
Macau Yangshuo Yangzi River Chengdu Shanghai Xian BeijingUK:
High Wycombe
Doll Queue Until we return home
Yes we are home and yes we know we are way behind with the blog but updates will keep coming untill we have completed it, bare with us
351 Days without a home cooked roast dinner
Travel Blog Posts
Australia Part 18 - Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef
Published: August 14th 2011Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Cairns » Cairns City
June 8th 2010
Massive bats, arrival of some sunshine and the nicest hostel so far! The morning of leaving Airlie beach hostel was a bit cold and far too early for my liking but with this great train pass, the having to board certain time trains was about the only down fall of it. We got onto the coach and the driver was almost British in his demeanour –ignoring us as we boarded after throwing our bags on board. The funniest thing, that made me think about home was that as we made our way up towards the train station he stopped at another bus stop and opened the doors briefly only to hear another traveller ask him if this was the bus to X – only for the driver to say no, not my problem and shut the ... read more
Australia Part 17 - Whitsundays 2
Published: July 28th 2011Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Whitsundays
June 6th 2010
Blue steel, eating ant bums and night fishing Next morning we all sat down to another big breakfast of fried food, fruit, cereal and juice etc it was like the best hotel breakfast ever, but being as Brian was always up at dawn (normally peeing over the side of the boat!) you had to be up early too to enjoy it. The smell of bacon was hard to ignore anyway but knowing Dan might beat you there was motivation enough! Brian also had a fabulous coffee grinder that he let you use as long as you went on the health and safety induction course he ran every morning and were supervised on your first few brews! It was nice coffee and really did give you a boost but he was way over protective of that ... read more
Australia Part 16 - Whitsundays 1
Published: July 13th 2011Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Whitsundays
June 4th 2010
Stingrays, Dugongs and stunning beaches So next morning after surviving the night when I could have drowned us all, we woke to a bit of a cloudy morning, which wasn’t disappointing as Nath and I had come to accept that the sun didn’t follow us anywhere. But what made it brighter was the smell of cooked breakfast awaiting us. Brain cooked so much food every time that if we hadn’t had Dan the living garbage can, we’d have been throwing food over the edge of the boat (which we still did with leftovers anyway on captain Brains orders). There were loads of other boats now moored at Whitehaven and apparently more would be arriving so I was glad we were planning to move on today. Brain was waiting to hear form his friend who was out ... read more
Australia Part 15 - Airlie Beach, Whitsundays
Published: June 27th 2011Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Whitsundays
June 2nd 2010
Drumbeat, Carlos the donkey and the return of Pailey walley Whilst Nath and I had had a few days in Rockhampton on our own with nothing to do –and I mean nothing, that place was like the Aussies version of New Plymouth; we did our usual free emailing etc and I was busy stressing about arranging our up and coming trip on this boat owned by a fellow couch surfer guy called Brian. Now way back in Brisbane I had contacted this guy out of many others as he was new to couch surfing too and thus didn’t require us to have huge credentials and reviews. He was offering us a trip on his boat around the Whitsunday islands for half the price of the commercial operators, and the opportunity was just too good to turn ... read more
May 29th 2010
Cow boys, Rodeos and sore arses!! I must say we were quite glad to be leaving Fraser Island; after all the deliberating as to whether it was worth the money or not and then for it to rain the whole time, we were feeling a little sorry for ourselves. It did feel like the weather gods were against us – come on I mean it’s not like we don’t get enough rain back home or anything!!! So on the good old rail network again we were now headed for the dim lights, cattle and incest of Rockhampton or Rocky as it’s known to the locals. Famous for sheep, a giant cow boy statute and F-all else, but hey it was dry at least. You may wonder why we were bothering, but some time ago I’d read ... read more
Australia Part 13 - Fraser Island
Published: May 17th 2011Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Hervey Bay » Fraser Island
May 25th 2010
Rain, rain oh and some more rain!!! With our “time out” in Brisbane over we headed on another train journey (which means more cream tea!) and then got a connecting bus to get to Hervy Bay, the nearest town that travellers stay at to get to Fraser Island. This was fairly obvious in the layout and excitement level of the town, that being pretty dull and just full of hostels and restaurants. The bus dropped us off quite late at this closed retail park basically, so we sat around and waited at a vague bus stop in the hope we were going to be picked up by the hostel bus at some point. Luckily for us there was good old MacDonald’s near by with free wifi whoopee, so we headed there for our dinner (we really ... read more
May 21st 2010
Red backs, steak burgers, a bath under the stars and Morton Island Well Ben wasn’t kidding when he said we’d be up early to make our way to his parents (ok ok it wasn’t before the birds but for us it was early). We were off to Toowoomba (love the aussies names for places) to visit Ben’s parents and we got the impression they were farmer types so would have all their daily jobs done had breakfast, built a new shed and caught something for lunch before we even got there. After a quick stop off for supplies (4 huge pieces of steak which Ben was gonna use as a burger on the BBQ – yes much to our surprise he did indeed mean that the steak would be the burger and that we wouldn’t be ... read more
Australia Part 11 - Brisbane 1
Published: October 3rd 2010Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Brisbane
May 14th 2010
A Happy Birthday for Amy, Couch surfing and weapons of mass distraction The coach into Brisbane was a long and late journey, but the scenery was pretty good, passing through Surfers Paradise (the Las Vegas of the Southern Hemisphere) which I’m glad we missed out, before arriving in Brisbane which was much bigger than I was expecting. The coach driver was a funny guy and the most sarcastic Aussie we had met so far. At one point waiting for the traffic lights to turn he started almost chatting to himself about, how these were the longest lights in the world and he’d once grown a full beard and moustache whilst waiting for them to change!!! Anyway we had a small walk to the hostel which was up a bloody hill (why lord why!!) and on the ... read more
May 8th 2010
Big bananas, rat poop, Pailey Wally and pancakes mmmm yummy!!! We had told Amy about the wonders of the cream teas on the train which she was most excited about, so it was a shame to find that this train was too late in the day to serve them. The train was very comfy as usual and only a short distance by comparison to the other rides and before we knew it we were in Coffs harbour. Again I had a stupid small map of the area and tried to find what direction we needed to go in to get to the YHA. This wasn’t helped by everything being on hills, the guide book hadn’t said anything about hills!!! We ended up looking like proper tourists (which I hate doing) starring around with our mouths open ... read more
Australia Part 9 - Gold Coast 1
Published: August 31st 2010Oceania » Australia » New South Wales » Newcastle
May 2nd 2010
Boredom, Beaches and new friends So our trip up the gold coast started with another great train journey with scones and jam (as per usual) and ended with us arriving in a place called Newcastle which was much warmer than the one in the UK. Although we weren’t far from Sydney at this point you could feel the temperature difference already. We made our way the short distance to the hostel which was an old manor house with a grand living room (now full of beer cans, dirt and hung-over travellers) and realised we were only moments from the beach - so first plan body boarding (as these were free). We checked in with the guy on reception who was pretty nice, we said we were YHA members, which I guess to him may have meant ... read more
Countries visited already 
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