It’s been a long time since i've written anything on here!! Since I've last written an entry I have been working picking apples which I thank god is now over, I have calluses on all my fingers and am bored of being told that apple picking is a highly skilled job and you need to "turn and twist" them off a tree instead of pluck them!! It's Bloody hard work for crappy money however ive managed to actually make money for the first time during my travels which can't be bad, even worked lugging around Persian carpets in a museum for [View Full Entry]

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Tongariro Crossing As I had mentioned in the last blog entry I was going to go on a hike ( or tramp as Kiwi's call them) through a place called the Tongariro Crossing which people will remember as 'Mount Doom' from Lord of the rings. On the 15 of Feb me and Mike a Canadian guy traveling with us both went on the tramp (the girls decided to go horse riding, wimps!). The views were stunning but the walk was very hard walk. The normal walk alone is 17km and as an option you can have a go at climbing [View Full Entry]

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Right as promised here are the pics of Kim and I doing our skydive.....rock on!!!!! Will add some pics of us on the ground aswell when we get a new cable for the Digi Cam :-s [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Auckland and it was definately colder than Oz. It actually made a welcome change though. The views from the plane were amazing. Auckland was, well just a city really but as the days went by it really started to grow on us. On the first day there we wanted to sort out what we were going to do before starting work. Yes, work! Two and half months of sitting on our behinds is coming to an end, damit! We really wanted to hire a car to get around as we more than had enough of buses in Oz. [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Paihai (prenonced pie-here) in the Bay of Islands which is in the Northern area of the North island. The drive was very scenic, but after 3 and a half hours in the car we all started to feel a bit like sardines. The car is acually quite big and a bit posh so we did all feel slightly like we were cheating and it didn't really look like a proper Backpacker car. The first day we just walked around Paihai for a while. It had gorgeous beaches and lots of islands scattered around in front of it. We [View Full Entry]

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Been a while since a major update so me and Kim are both writing entries at the same time. After traveling to the Bay of Islands we set off in our 'dented' back to Auckland briefly to drop Jo off who was going to meet us in Rotorua the next day. Driving in New Zealand is very different from driving back home, endless countryside and hardly any people and lots and lots of sheep!! Took about 3 hours driving to get to Rotorua all the time we could hear part of our damaged car scraping along the road everytime we hit [View Full Entry]

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Cyclone, my arse! The weather in cairns was beautiful, in fact too hot for a couple of days! It was especially bad when our air conditioning broke down in our room, it was like sleeping in an oven!! The day we arrived in Cairns (off a rather dirty, damp and uncomfortable 12 hour bus journey!) we bumped into two of the girls we'd spent load of time with in Thailand, Gemma and Carolyn. It was so good seeing them so went out that evening with them to celebrated Caz's birthday and that they were leaving the next day to go home. [View Full Entry]

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We arrived on the bus at Airlie beach and had to go straight onto the boat for sailing round the Whitsunday Islands. The boat we were on was called the British Defender, 40ft racing yatch that had been round the world a few times. They was 26 people on board including Ti, Landy and Maura who we'd done Fraiser Island with. There was also a guy on there from Chatham who'd lived in Maidstone so it was quite weird when we started reminising about nights at Strawberry Moons. It was so much more relaxing than camping, we got waited on hand [View Full Entry]

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Yes, we know we havn't done a blog for ages but i promise its not because we're being lazy (or too drunk!) we have actually been really busy. We arrived in Byron Bay after Sydney for a few relaxing days on the beach before heading into Queensland for 10 days of activities. Great little town which is obviously what everyone thinks as it was hell trying to find a hostel! They've got the most beautiful beaches, one called Tallow which is great for surfing. However, as me and Trev are pretty pants at it and can't even stand up on one [View Full Entry]

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We both arrived in Sydney on wed 11th, Kim flying in from Taz and me traveling on a very long and boring bus journey from Melbourne (12 hours long). Kim arrived to find me asleep already in the hostel (in Chinatown) and managed to drag me out of bed to go and see stuff around the city. The weather was very hot outside and we walked from the hostel Elizabeth St to the Royal Botanical gardens. The gardens were very scenic and there was a lot to see with spectacular views across the harbour. After walking through the gardens we came [View Full Entry]

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