Blogs from Oceania - page 6495

Hi All Less than a week to go to our flights to the US, and with no rain for ages all of a sudden the skies opened to pour rain upon the parched earth in Cooktown. 2 inches on Saturday night and then rained most of yesterday adding a further downpour - don't know yet how much (waiting for the Bureau of Met to release this info.) Had a good look on the Internet at the weather for Los Angeles, Santa Paula, Santa Clarita, Sacramento, Willows, Williams and of course San Francisco - all major areas that we will be visiting in the US!!!!! 4 night time sleeps and then off to Cairns - Skytrans again (what a great little service that is - and we hope to be on the new Dash 8) and of ... read more

Greetings!! I arrived in Auckland with several hours to wait before my campervan was ready. The flight wasn't all that bad and I was able to get some sleep. After getting used to driving on the other side of the road and sitting on the opposite side of the van, I made my way out of Auckland and headed north. I made a slower start than expected, so I wasn't able to make it all the way to Cape Reinga - the northernmost point. Instead, I stayed the night at Paihia in the Bay of Islands. I took a cruise and enjoyed the scenery. The weather was nice, but a little overcast, so I'm sure that hampered some of the beauty. There was a huge private yacht anchored in the bay that we all were amazed ... read more

Tuesday 16th January to Thursday 18th January 2007. We didn't push north from Queenstown until 11am having spent an hour looking around the picuresque but essentially tourist hotspot town and whilst Marg had called her hubby, daughter and sister which had undoubtedly put a spring in her step as well as succeeding in banishing the upset stomach from which she'd been suffering the previous night and purchased another couple of postcards I got up to date with my e mails. If you haven't received one of Marg's postcards by the time you read this then you must be out of favour, I've taken the mickey mercilessly and told her when she's been thinking of something to write "just copy the other ones, they'll never know" but she's always blatantly snubbed the idea completely. We had two ... read more

It's all about the extreme here in New Zealand you know, and Queenstown is where it's all happening! On our drive there we stopped at a little place called the AJ Hacket bungy jump. It was the first commercial bungy jump in the world and it is over a beautiful blue river from a bridge. Quite on the spur of the moment, Sophie (a girl on our bus) and I (Amy) decided to do it tandem! Sophie, bless, was terrified which was good because I was too busy trying to calm her down that I forgot to get too scared myself! We asked to just get our fingertips wet and we went on the first count down after Sophie had calmed down a little! They actually dunked us to opur waists which was funny, luckily ... read more

A quick flight later and we were in Adelaide. Time to recharge the batteries before another early start to catch a bus from the city centre down to Cape Jervis to catch the Sealink ferry to Kangaroo Island. We'd booked a car at Penneshaw to drive round the island as there are no local public transport services. Now to look at the island on a map it appears very small in comparison to Australia, however is about 120Km long. Only the main roads are sealed, the rest being dirt tracks cut through the bush which makes pretty hairy driving, especially when the roads become ridged like corrogated iron and driving at any less than 50Km/hour feels like you're in a car suspension test centre. Our first stop of the day was to the information centre to ... read more