http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Will-and-Alex/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Will and Alex en-us Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:37:38 +0000 Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:37:38 +0000 Photos from our visit to Regensburg December 2009. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Regensburg/blog-461045.html Photos from our visit to Bamberg during our trip to Bavaria December 2009 http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Bamberg/blog-461044.html Photos from our visit to Nuremberg December 2009. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Nuremberg/blog-461043.html Photographs from my July 2009 trip to South Africa with Magdalen College School. http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/South-Africa/Limpopo/blog-437970.html Photos from our trip to Iceland August 2009. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Iceland/blog-435492.html A weekend of camping and walking in the wilds of Exmoor May 2009. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Somerset/Exmoor/blog-406637.html Photographs from our day trip to Coimbra from Porto Portugal 29th March 2009. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Portugal/Central/Coimbra/blog-387999.html Photographs of our recent trip to Porto March 2009. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Portugal/Northern/Porto/blog-387992.html Photographs from our trip to Fez 1621 February 2009. http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/F-s-Boulemane/Fes/blog-375635.html Photos from our recent trip to Germany we visited the towns of Rothenburg ob der Tauber Dinkelsbuehl Feuchtwangen Schwaebisch Hall and Backnang in the states of Bavaria and BadenWuerttemberg. Just the way to get into the Christmas spirit continentalEurope style... http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber/blog-371891.html Photographs from our recent trip to Istanbul October 2008 http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Istanbul/blog-371889.html A Maori legend has it that long ago a godlike being Tuterakiwhanoa wielded his axe to carve out the landscape of South Island. If you look at a map of the southern end of South Island you might well believe it. Indeed the island's southwestern coast facing Australia and the Tasman Sea does look like it has had an axe taken to it convoluted and narrow inlets seemingly hewn out of the sp http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Fiordland-National-Park/Doubtful-Sound/blog-303585.html The 170km from Omarama to Queenstown take us gently back towards the mountains. The road passes through Tarras a tiny blip on the map which gained worldwide fame well almost as the home of Shrek a naughty merino sheep who was found in 2004 having evaded the shears for six consecutive years and as you might expect looking quite alarming for this fact. The hapless creature having avoided cap http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Queenstown/blog-303359.html Having passed the morning watching playful dolphins frolicking in Le Bons Bay we spend a couple of hours in Akaroa the largest town on the Banks Peninsula and located at the end of a deep inlet that extends all the way to the centre of the peninsula. Akaroa is a gentrified kind of place all cafs and estate agents not too different from your average West London high street then except for th http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Canterbury-Plains/blog-302161.html It does not take long at all to get used to the gentle pace of life at Peter's Dive Resort and to forget the cares and woes of home. Which makes it all the more difficult to accept we have to leave. It's been a great privilege to dive Sogod Bay's stunning reefs gliding past its precipitous walls alive with the most extraordinary biodiversity we've ever seen.The timing of our return to Hong Kong http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Cebu/Cebu-City/blog-274863.html I can think of worse places to spend a few hours than Hong Kong's airport. Although it opened ten years ago replacing the infamous Kai Tak Airport with its hairraising approach and relatively frequent instances of planes taking a dip in Victoria Harbour after overshooting the runway it looks barely a day old and is an extremely impressive structure. Unfortunately our flight is at half past m http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Southern-Leyte/blog-261263.html I'd always thought you needed to be at the airport two hours for your flight so you had time to check in go through interminable security checks do a spot of duty free shopping and walk along equally interminable corridors to your gate. Not any more it seems in this era of the internet. Having been dropped off at the airport a generous twoandabit hours in advance we were surprised to fin http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Hong-Kong/blog-268729.html We rise early and leave our maternity hospital room to have a quick nose through Geraldine's main street a cute mix of craft shops and small grocers. Massive supermarkets are few and far between round here there are fewer than 7 people per square kilometre in South Island compared to 281 on the island of Great Britain and small food shops abound. Is there anything not good about this country http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Mount-Cook-National-Park/blog-229057.html Four weeddestroying sheepchasing and tangelosqueezing weeks later our time in Opotiki and at Te Aranga has come to an end. As well as being good exercise and a valuable opportunity to learn about many facets of New Zealand life these four weeks have also been restful beyond our expectations. After some six and half months of constant movement rarely sleeping in the same bed two nights in a http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Banks-Peninsula/blog-229053.html Christmas was the last thing we were expecting our boreal brains had some difficulty reconciling the month with the weather. But Christmas it was before we knew it. We were fortunate enough to have been isolated from the consumerist hype that has come to typify Christmas at home no jingles in shops from September onwards no television adverts exhorting us to buybuybuy and spendspendspend. Qui http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/North-Island/Bay-of-Plenty/Otara-River/blog-228319.html