Steve and Suz

Hi all, After a very rushed trip from Queenstown up the west coast of the south island to make our ferry on the 19th, we have made it to Wellington (on the North Island). Now all we have to do is get to Auckland (at the other end of the north island) via a variety of tourist attractions in time for our flight to South Africa in seven days time! It’s going to be hectic but we are determined to see few things on this island before we leave. Starting where we left off in our last entry... The pictures we posted of us feeding animals were actually at a place in Queenstown called Deer Heights Park where several scenes from the Lord of the Rings films were shot. It is a beautiful place with fantastic ... read more

Hi all, we hope you are well. As you may have guessed from our last entry, we have now been in New Zealand for just over a week and started seeing the amazing sights of the South Island. We landed in Christchurch on the 19th and after declaring our walking boots and tent (yes... we have learnt from our Darwin experience!) we got through customs quickly and jumped on a mini-bus to our chosen hostel. This is supposed to be the middle of their summertime however, the weather was dull and overcast and we were convinced the rain was following us around the world. We spent our first afternoon looking around the friendly city and buying the usuals.. i.e. a sim card and a lonely planet! Our hostel (Occidental) was in a good location, clean and ... read more

we promise we will write an entry soon... heres some more pics from the West Coast down to Margaret River...... read more

Well, after an amazing (yet tiring) extended stay in SE-Asia we have finally got to Australia. The flight was just a couple of hours from Bali and we arrived at Darwin airport at roughly 5am last Monday morning. Tired and eager to get to a guest house we quickly ticked 'nothing to declare' on our arrival form and heading to customs. When the kind lady asked us to empty our bags, we thought nothing of it - just a quick security check we thought and we could be on our way. But that was not so. It was almost like we were international terrorists when the lady discovered the high risk small wooden hand-drum and bamboo ball in Steves bag. The shit really hit the fan when she found a dairy milk chocolate bar smuggled from ... read more

We arrived at the port town of Thong Sala on Koh Phangan without a clue where to head to so, after our dithering, we managed to miss all the taxis taking all the other people to the various beaches. When we finally decided to go to Haad Yao we had to pay 100 Baht each because there was no-one else to share the cost with. We got dropped at some pleasant bungalows on the beach, found the cheapest one and had a look around. We were very pleased with ourselves for choosing Haad Yao as the beach was beautiful with white sand and clear, calm water and a few chilled out bars and restaurants (without all the tack). We had chosen it because the Lonely Planet said it had some of the best snorkeling on the ... read more