megsandmark

i have now gotten quite far behind on what we have been up to so this will be a very brief overview of the last couple of weeks. we made it to kaikoura to see loads of seals and a big waterfall with a pool of about 50 seal pups after drinking 2 cans each of red bull. they were all buzzing, zipping around in the water jumping up and down. so amazing and qgain like the pnguins a couple came out of the water to stand right in front of megan, where she was so close she could have touched the little pup. we drove on through blenhiem, picton and picked the windy cliff edge route to nelson then onto abel tasman national park. a bit of a drive away but it was so nice ... read more

we landed in new zealand to the pilots voice over the intercom saying its a beautiful day today, clear skies and hot 18°... 18°? we had been used to hot being 30° and cold being 18. we got into the airport with a campervanbooked for the rest of the month except that first night as we arrived about 3pm. we had been told that new zealand is even more expensive than australia (which is when we looked at out bank accounts and took a huge gulp) to our suprise however, everything is a lot more like english prices. we rang a motel close by who said they only have one room left which was an appartment but we coupd have it for the cheap price. sweet. it was a little dated but was clean had a ... read more

Once we left phillip island and Melbourne we started heading across the coast of victoria towards the NSW border. We had a bit of an exciting/scary night where we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere empty on full with no sivilisation insight. We stopped down a road for the night an woke up to a beautiful view over a lake with mountains in the bakground with the steam rising off the lake from the morning sunrise heat. perfect. Only problemm is we woke up and then saw a 'strictly no camping' sign and our van still empty. After filling up the most i had ever put in the van we were on our way. to be honest most of victorias south coast was pretty boring and as we headed into NSW suddenly it got better. ... read more

After a good time in Canberra, we left for the not-so-snowy, snowy mountains but not before we went to the parliment house for question time. We were given one route to get there as roads were closed due to flooding and it was obvious to see the effects the huge rains have had in australia with locals telling us of new rivers and lakes that just wern't there before. We arrived in Jindabyne and parked up next to the obviously over flowing lake with picnic penches and the kids play park in the water. it had been nice weather recently so we wern't worried about us getting washed away in the night. The next day we took advantage of the low winds, bright sun and a full lake by hiring some canoes for a couple of ... read more

We unfortuantly didn't get to see Bindy in with the crocs but we did survive the trip to Australia zoo with all our limbs still attached. Again as it has been a long time since i last blogged i have forgotten what we did and in what order but i will try try remember and fill you all in. We enjoyed having megs parents with us for a couple of weeks travelling up and down the east coast of Australia enjoying walks, mountains, beahes and swimming in the ocean. We said goodbye to them in Brisbane and started our travels of Australia on our own. We stayed around in 'Brizzy' for a few more days checking out art galleries, museums and making the most of free internet in the public libary before relocating a campa from ... read more

Hey ozzy, Since my stupid laptop broke (Mouldy, Collier I'll PM you) I havnt been able to be in conatct much... sorry for that. It has almost been 2 weeks since we arrived in Australia and we have done so much inm that time leaving this afternoon as a rest before going to Autralia zoo tomorrow (Friday 17th)... Crikey mate! Since my last blog (which i relise i released one straight after the other) i said we were heading for the beach... we had a bit of change of plans as we saw the weather wasnt going to be amazing and saw other oppotunities of things for us to do. We stayed in the blue mountains another day seeing some more waterfalls, going on more amazing walks trying to get the leaches off of us and ... read more

Dear Australia... our new friend, It's been a lovely first couple of days seeing you! We arrived and were greeted by R + R at the airport, where we had a good catch up on all that we had been up to and visa versa. We found our hotel and had a nice long rest. I thought you would like to know that we hired some bikes and went to Hillsong church in the morning, we carried on with our bikes to visit 'Paddys Market' and then on to darling harbour after that, which, I'm sure you know, is the biggest natural harbour in the world. The next day we walked to the tower in Sydney that is 309 Meters high, which had an awesome view over Sydney; we saw where we were the day previous ... read more

We have now spent and are finishing our 5 month spell in Africa with a couple of days in South Africa before making our way to the land of Oz. I have realised that I havnt written a blog for a while and the last time I wrote we were in Mozambique. We had a really nice time in Mozambique and I will try to summarise the month in a short paragragh. We arrived on the 4th of Jan at Iris Ministries, Pemba, where the 'Colliers' had already been for a week, so it was real nice to have friends that we new to help settle us in. Even though it was the quite season on the base, there were still plenty visitor helpers (like us) for us to chat too and spend time with over ... read more

Today was prison ministry; Megan, me and about 10 others gathered together to go on a trip to go to the local prison. This is a ministry that Iris do once a week on a Tuesday, run by a guy who used to be in the prison himself, called Ezekiel. We all jumped into the back of a truck to take us on a 20 minute drive before we arrived at the prison. We arrived in the grounds of the prison where we took our ‘valuables’ out of our pockets before we went in to the confined prison building. This was quite annoying as I wanted to take pictures but perhaps you will just have to imagine it… …We entered through the main gate into the prison building itself and straight in front of us was ... read more

I was talking about, in our last blog, how we helped prepare 3 ½ tonnes of beans into 10kg sacks ready to be distributed; well maize and rice had also been sacked up in 5kg bags (before we had arrive) and were already to be given to the widows and disabled in the community. On Monday 9th of January, hundreds of men and women came to the Iris base, collected a ticket and queued up ready to collect their free food for the next 2 weeks. We had 4 stations ready to receive 1 person at a time, to load them up with food to take home to their families. They laid down their multipurpose material flat on the floor and we would poor rice in and then put a bag of beans and a bag ... read more