Round The World Rach

Hello Just a little update of the last leg of my journey before spending time with my family and friends here before setting off home. After Queenstown the bus took me to Dunedin, a scottish settlement on the East Coast of the South Island. Dunedin literally means "Edinburgh Of The South" I only spent an afternoon there as I needed to keep moving on the bus to make sure that I could spend a week at Catherine and Adams in Christchurch and a long weekend up with Katie and Sandy in Auckland before my flight home. The Irish people from Queenstown were there again so I met back up with them. I spent my afternoon wandering around the city. There is an octagon shape in the city which has a statue of Robbie Burns and most ... read more

On the bus from Franz Joseph to Queenstown I decided to jump off at a little town called Wanaka. A few people had reccomended the place and I was also planning to have a go at skiing and Pete the farmer had told me that it would be easier and cheaper to get to Cardrona Ski Fields from there are that was his reccomendation as the best place to start my skiing lessons. When I got to Wanaka I'd planned to stay at the Purple Cow but after the bus dropped me off I was told that all the beds were taken. By chance a lady who happened to be there at the time said that she owned the Matterhorn South Hostel and that there would be a bed there for me and she gave me ... read more

You might remember a while back I mentioned that I'd joined a scheme called WWOOFing - Willing Workers On Organic Farms. The scheme allows travellers to go and work on farms in exchange for food, accomodation and farming experience. I joined up and managed to find a nice sounding dairy farm on the West Coast of the South Island in a little village called Whataroa. The job description was ''Milking cows, shearing sheep, some horse riding and general farm chores'' I decided it sounded okay so I set off to give it a go. When I arrived at the farm I met the family and the two other WWOOFers that were working there. There was Pete the farmer, his wife Sonia, their daughter Laura and a couple from the Czech Republic called Ivana & Joseph. First ... read more

Hello everyone Well I am going to have to miss out two blogs here because I've done something really stupid. I've left all the photos of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing and my time down in Christchurch with Cat & Adam on a CD at Cat & Adams house. I had to clear my memory card to use in my new camera (my other one broke when I was doing the crossing) so I saved everything onto a CD and then left it there for safekeeping! Whoops, nevermind I'll just add those two on at the end when I get the CD back. I would have just done the blogs without them but the pictures are really good. After I left Christchurch I drove back up to Nelson where I have been staying and using as a ... read more

The trip down to Rotarua on the Magic Bus wasn't great - I think I have come to the realisation that I have booked the wrong bus for what I want! I just wanted something like the Greyhound Bus in Australia that would take me from A - B with no fuss but the Magic Bus is more like a guided tour and what should have been about a four hour journey from Auckland to Rotorua ended up taking ten hours. It's actually a bit of a rip off, they stop everywhere for you to do expensive activities and if you don't want to do them then you just have to sit on the bus and wait. The alternative is to spend money on activities that you don't really want to do. It's totally the wrong ... read more