Olidownunder

Hello! There's even less people living on the West Coast than anywhere else in NZ... Nothing much up in Greymouth, so I joined the local brewery tour. Sweet. Oli... read more

Hello! Now in Wellington for a few days. Although very windy and something like 4 times smaller than Auckland, I found Wellington much more enjoyable and lively than Auckland (everyone will agree with that, except Aucklanders I was told), with lots of restaurants and cafes, nothing like Canberra. I shared a dorm with Katharina, Tim and Guillaume, and we had our own ensuite bathroom - a real nice one. It was a bit like having our own home. Had lots of fun and laughter together. As Wellington is NZ's capital, it houses the Parliament which we had an interesting guided tour of. But even better, I was able to attend a cocktail reception for the French and NZ rugby teams held in Parliament. Apart from both teams and staff, the only people there were members of ... read more

Kia ora! On our way to Rotorua, we stopped at Waitomo where I went to see the glowworm caves. As well as the usual stalactites and stalagmites, these caves are home to many glow-worms. Glow-worms are very strange animals; they are larvae that live suspended from cave ceilings and weave sticky threads which trail down and catch flying insects attracted by their luminescent organs. The insect gets paralysed and the glow-worm then sucks it out. The adult form of the glow-worms does not have a mouth (!) and so only lives for 2 or 3 days, just enough time to mate, lay eggs and die. Hard to believe sci-fi animals but there's actually a museum about them and if you want to check them out, their nickname is Arachnocampa luminosa. Anyway, we boarded a rowboat and ... read more

Hello! Now adding a New Zealand leg to my trip, starting in Auckland. The city of Auckland is not built on 7 hills but on 48 volcanoes! So there's lots of going up and down. I don't think I've come across a single flat street... It's quite spread out, but even then, that's a lot of volcanoes in a same place... It's also the city with the biggest Pacific Islanders population, with people coming from Fiji, Samoa, Tonga etc... With over a million of the four million New Zealanders, it is the big city in NZ. Auckland too has its own nice bay, harbour and Harbour Bridge which goes with it. Sweet. Oli ... read more

G'day! Or should it be ni hao? Taking advantage of my strategic location near to Sydney's Chinatown, I found a travel agent offering very cheap day-trips. Why not go to Canberra? And their price for it was 4 times less expensive than similar offers with other travel agents. I even checked the price of a train or coach journey to Canberra by public transport and even that was more expensive! A real steal deal I found. The only thing was that it was intended for Chinese tourists and that the guide was only going to speak Chinese. But never mind! I must add that Canberra is about 4 hours away from Sydney, so the day was something like 8 hours driving to Canberra and back, and less than 3 hours actually visiting Canberra. When Australia became ... read more