We are Back!!! No we hadn't left even Kent but we've been on a 10 week journey of a different kind. The journey to a bigger house. Instead of moving house we have extended our kitchen and are absolutely loving it now. Having said that we had a bit of a love - hate relationship with the journey to get to this point (Lets say Claudi wanted an extension and Terry had to suffer the consequences). It had all started last summer, when we were back from our long journey around the world and sat on our bench infront of our [View Full Entry]

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Hang on I thought we had just passed immigration procedures for the United States of America.... We arrived in California to meet up with Jeff and Kristy, who we hadn't seen since their wedding in 2002. Unfortunately they weren't in due to a family bereavement. They were very generous and let us stay in their house in Santa Monica. We wandered around the many blocks of Santa Monica and found Venice. Several small canals where people have built their dreamhomes, some in italian renaissance style. We then drove through the desert, passing forests of Joshua trees to arrive in Las [View Full Entry]

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Flying from Fiji to the Cooks is only a straight easterly flight of 3 hours. We stayed for a few hours on Rarotonga the main cook island and then set off to discover Aitutaki, an atoll in the cook island group. life in the cooks was even more relaxed than in Fiji, everyone wearing flowers in their hair and being really smiley. But the cooks were also very much like a tropical New Zealand. The main language beinlg Maori and the locals looking much more like the maori in NZ than like fijians for example. On Aitutaki we had intended [View Full Entry]

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CK: Arriving in Fiji was a bit of an indian experience. (Not only due to many of the taxidrivers being indo-fifjian.) We were not quite ready for Fiji, missing being in New Zealnd already. But things worked out fine. We stayed one night in Nadi (for people who are looking for traveldetails, there will be a paragraph at the bottom) and then took a cab to the Yasawa Flyer from Denarau (as the bus left from the side of the road, not from the hotel drive where we waited, oh well). Tickets were easily booked at the marina and off [View Full Entry]

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We have had an amazing time during our 2nd half in NZ. Last time we wrote was in queenstown: From there we did a lot of driving through some amazing countryside up the west coast. After a cold spell and night temps around 4 degrees. (sleeping with thermals and hoodies on) the weather became lovely and warm again. We visited the glacier region and did a lovely walk just at the foot of the Fox galcier around Lake Matheson. Due to recent glacier movement and rainshowers we were advised not to get too close to the ice. Nevertheless we got [View Full Entry]

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TK: We have now finally got our camper van; although to call it a camper van is stretching the definition slightly as it is really no more than a car with a really big boot - big enough to sleep in. It does have the advantage that it is painted in a different style and therefore it is easy to find in the parking lot. It has been fun to travel around and stop where we want - no deadlines, no traintimetables to read up, no booking into hotels, just the open road. CK: The van is absolutely gorgeous from the [View Full Entry]

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We met up with Helen Mesure (a fellow osteopath) in Kaikoura yesterday and went whale watching. Very surreal meeting someone for a day out half way arround the world though. From the information centre we were all bused to a large high speed katamaran. We went for about 30 min out to the open sea and then it was more Whale hunting then watching for most of the time. The Maori captain of the ship stopped periodically to hang a 6 foot listening device into the water to discern any clicks that whales apparently make to orrientate themselves. The whales in [View Full Entry]

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No Panic! This is the name of our guest house, as it is a converted old victorian jail. (You can see it under www.jail.co.nz) We arrived in Christchurch a couple of days ago and were/are astonished about the englishness of it all. The first couple days it was a little overcast so it even felt like English summer. We have indulged in cooking our own food (spaghetti bolognese) and raided the local supermarket just because we can. We've stocked up o walking boots and fleeces and tomorrow we will rent a car for a few days to drive arround before we [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday we went for picnic in a national parc and in the evening we treated ourselves to Opera tickets in the Sydney opera house. Amazing! We saw Alcina by Haendle and it was just beautiful! It was good fun dressing up for the occasion. After almost for month in Teva sandals and baggy shirts we felt like the king and queen. Today was the day of great Australian nature: Karl took us on a trip to the blue mountains and we enjoyed great views at Katoomba. The weather was odd though: it was raining but through the rain the sun still [View Full Entry]

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All Peaches and Cream!!! We arrived in Australia last sunday to see our friends Karl and Barbara Baron. We had a very warm welcome here. After washing all our clothes on the first night (to eliminate the possibility of any imported bed bugs) we got up dead early next morning and went with Karl into the city of Sydney to witness the Queen Mary 2 (one of the biggest cruise ships in the world) coming into the harbour. we had prime seats from Karls office on the 27th floor. Magnificent. The event caused central Sydney to have some kind of fairground [View Full Entry]

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