At the time of writing the Fijian military has staged a coup and seized control of the country. When we arrived in Fiji there was a lot of talk about a potential coup but contrary to travellers' tales and foreign press, there were no visible signs of such activity or indeed any civil unrest. The people in Fjii are truely nonchalent about coups so we adopted this attitude! As Fiji was on the list of countries we could visit on our ATW ticket, we thought that it was a great opportunity to catch up with the estranged members of our London/New [View Full Entry]

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Auckland, "The City of Sails" is home to NZ's largest concentration of people. It is a unique place unlike the rest of NZ and consequently hated by all non-Aucklanders, who consider it brash and full of arrogant city-folk. Laura and I like cities and Auckland was no exception - are we brash and arrogant people? No! We just seem to gel with the "big shmokes". It has plenty of action in the centre and attractive suburbs - particularly Ponsonby, where we stayed, Parnell and Devonport, across the harbour. The only problem for us, was the need to sell our car and [View Full Entry]

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Our road trip around NZ would soon be ending, but before we sold our wheels in Auckland, we had one final road to tear up - the twin coastal explorer route in the Northland where we travelled north bound via the East coast and looped back down on the western highway. From the advice of travellers who've walked these shores before - Carolyn, Paul and Mamma and Pappa Ramsey, we knew that this area, particularly the Bay of Islands, was a highlight of NZ. Being the northern most region of the North Island, much of the vegation and associated fauna is [View Full Entry]

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Driving north of Rotorua, you soon hit the northern coast and the Bay of Plenty, named as such by Captain Cook when he first hit the coastline and observed an abundance of food supplies in the Maori villages. It still is an area with an abundance of food being a major citrus fruit and kiwi fruit growing region - in fact Te Puke, a small town on this stretch of coastline claims to be "the kiwi fruit capital of the world". For tourists however, this stretch of coastline is more a "Bay Of Very Little" - a few garish beach/harbour towns [View Full Entry]

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Well... this blog should have regaled you with tales of sky diving and of climbing volcanoes. There should have been unforgettable images of freefall and of the inner steaming vents of Tongariro. Unfortunately, the weather man had other ideas for our Central Plateau stay.... First day in Taupo, we were booked to sky dive at 9am. We awoke early and for the first time since making the decision to drop and committing to throwing ourselves out of a perfectly good plane, we were no longer scared but really excited! We opened the curtains on this big day, to be greeted with [View Full Entry]

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Zorbing is a bit like throwing yourself into an oversized hamster ball and being pushed down a hill (cheers for your words Pauly Boy). The Zorb itself is made out of lilo material and has a sphere of space inside, big enough for even a Tommy sized person to stand up in and up to two more people. They can even chuck some water in there, warm water if you ask nicely. You enter the Zorb through a 1/2 m diameter sized hole which is zipped up before you are pushed from the top of a 50m long embankment which follows [View Full Entry]

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Okay, so I'll try to make this brief because not everyone is a massive LOTR geek like me and probably wouldn't spend the 50 NZD to see a field, some plywood boards and a big tree. I myself thought it was a bit steep but since the place was on private land, it was the only way. The Hobbiton set outside of Matamata was chosen by Peter Jackson because of its green rolling countryside, the absence of man made clutter (i.e. roads, power lines or buildings) and the large pine tree or "party tree" as it was known. After filming was [View Full Entry]

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Wellington, NZ's capital perched on the southern tip of the N.Island, is known as "The Windy City" and it sure does live up to its name. It seems to be constantly blowing a gale and despite it being a lovely city with lots going on, being whipped about all day, everyday, must surely be tiresome for its residents. Due to an Indian visa fiasco (for fiasco, see "improper preparataion and planning"), we needed to be in Welly 4 days after we arrived. Since we only had just over two weeks on the N.Island, we didn't want to spend a quarter of [View Full Entry]

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I am so pleased we allowed time in our increasingly hectic schedule to visit the small rural town, Waitomo. We'd heard good things about the "black water rafting" that you can do there which had been described to us as sitting in a blown up tractor tyre tube on a river in the pitch black of a cave. Fun. The extensive network of caves in the subterranea of the Waikato district are formed as rain water trickles through a ceiling of porous limestone rocks, eroding the soft rocks and forming stalagmites and stalactites and all that.... The caves are also home [View Full Entry]

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Rebuilt after nearly being completely flattened by an earthquake in 1931, Napier is now best known as "The Art Deco City" of NZ. The architecture is unique, making Napier one of the most photogenic towns in NZ. Hawke's Bay on which it sits, is also one of NZs premier wine-growing regions and so for our visit, a decadent liquid lunch was in order. We received some good local knowledge from a guy cleaning his car outside our hostel. We followed his wisdom and headed for the Clearview Estate to sample its award winning vino and cracking cuisine. Bottom [View Full Entry]

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