We awoke to bright sunshine, a sure sign that we were leaving the Coromandel. After a quick breakfast, we headed down the east coast, with a quick coffee stop in Tairua, to Karanghake Gorge for lunch. The gorge, with it's old mine workings and abandoned railway tracks was as impressive as we remembered. We also passed through the town of Peroa - home of the soft drink L&P ("World famous in New Zealand") which is commemorated with a huge L&P bottle. We stopped for supplies in Hamilton before arriving in the surf town of Raglan at the time we had told [View Full Entry]

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On Thursday morning (Emma's birthday) we drove up to the Coromandel Peninsula for Anzac Day weekend on the South Pacific coast. We stopped a couple of times, most notabily to watch a huge flock of Black Swans on the "Seabird coast" near the town of Miranda. We also stopped in the old gold mining town of Thames for pies... After following the amazing west coast road along the Peninsula and then crossing the mountainous spine on some very windy roads, we arrived at "Black Jack Lodge" in Kuaotunu late afternoon and then made a quick run across the mountains to Whitian [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Auckland on Sunday evening and checked into our backpackers in Ponsonby. That evening we explored Ponsonby road and found a decent foodcourt for cheap and delicious Thai food. On Monday, we walked across Western Park (Verandahs Backpackers sits on the edge of this green space) and into the city's CBD for a spot of shopping and general information gathering. By evening, we had worked our way down to the harbour and ate greenlip mussels and seafood chowder for dinner in a waterside restaurant/bar. On Tuesday, we went to RockShop on K'Road - just to look at the [View Full Entry]

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On our way down to Auckland, we decided to take the long way around and drove down the west coast, revisiting the small towns of Oponini and Omapere in the Hokianga region and paying our respects to the 2000-year kauri tree "Tane Mahuta" in the Waipoua forest . During our stop for lunch there was just time for Tim to indulge in a little air guitar and for Em to enjoy a quick-bottle-of-beer-whilst-wearing-a-hat-and-winking... [View Full Entry]

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Thursday morning brought blue skies and sunshine and reminded us why we had come to Northland first. Although, despite the previous days' it had not once actually been cold - the sub-tropical climate makes even the rain enjoyable! We checked out of Little Earth Lodge, said goodbye to the people we'd met there (including Muttley the dog) and headed north for Kahoe. On the way we stopped at Keri Keri which is becoming quite a thriving town since we last visited (the fastest growing in NZ) and headed to the 'Stone Store' and 'Mission house' which are the oldest buildings [View Full Entry]

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On tuesday, after a lot of sleep, we awoke to torrential rain so we decided it was best to head into Whangarei city to do some boring stuff. We set up bank accounts, bought some gear at Kathmandu (outdoor shop), looked at mobile phones in the Vodafone shop, looked at pianos, guitars and amps in a music shop, checked out CDs and DVDs in a record shop and so forth. Afterwards we had a quick lunch in a cafe (the pies ARE a good as we remember!) and then headed out of town to "The Warehouse" for some food shopping. By [View Full Entry]

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Just a quick blog to let everyone know that we made it here safely and are now New Zealand residents! The flight from Heathrow was enlivened by the fact that our shuttle transfer was nearly an hour late from Manchester forcing us to run across half the airport and plead to be let onto the Air New Zealand flight. The experience was also greatly enhanced by the helpful security guy at heathrow who told us we had definitely missed our plane and should just give up and go and ask to booked on the next day's plane instead of attempting to [View Full Entry]

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We've given up our jobs, sold our house and most of our possessions, packed four suitcases and a guitar and are 5 days away from our new life in New Zealand. We'll be travelling from Auckland to Christchurch, looking for somewhere to live, work and generally enjoy life in a new country! Our last few of weeks have involved a mini-tour of the UK - visiting friends and family in Pembrokeshire, Wirral, Liverpool, Northamptonshire, Shropshire and also whistle stop tours of Oxford, Tenby, Cardiff, Bristol and Southport. We're starting up this travelblog again and will be publishing from the r [View Full Entry]

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We took a quick break from work to spend 4 days in Rome. We arrived on the Saturday at Ciampino airport, took a shuttle bus to Termini station and then the metro to our hotel/B&B. We spent the afternoon and the rest of the evening walking around the centre seeing some of the famous sights: Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Spanish Steps etc. That evening, we enjoyed the wonderful italian cusine on offer at the Hard Rock Cafe on Via Veneto. On the Sunday, we took a long walk down to the ancient part of the city: Circus Maximus, Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum. [View Full Entry]

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We spent a week on the Red Sea, staying in Sharm El Sheikh on the Sinai peninsula. Most of our time was spent snorkelling on the amazing coral reefs, but we also found time to take a boat trip out the the Ras Mohamed National Marine Park and also spend a little time exploring the city of Sharm itself. [View Full Entry]

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