Amy and Ryan

After returning to LA for a night, we caught the Coast Starlight train up the Californian coast to our first stop, Santa Barbara. We only stayed one night here, but had enough time to get a taste of it, walking up and down its pretty streets with lots of small shops and restaurants. The architecture was quite Mediterranean in nature and there were great mountain views which would have been even better if the haze hadn't been so bad. We walked down to the beach and climbed a tower which had impressive views of the town. Leaving Santa Barbara we got back on the Coast Starlight train for a 9 hour journey up to San Francisco, we snaked along the coast and through mountains. It even had a special viewing carriage made mostly of glass for ... read more

After spending almost an entire day at Nadi Airport, we got our overnight flight to LA, being frisked, fingerprinted, photographed, all the usual American security. We found our hostel on the Hollywood Boulevard, fortunately being given a four-bed dorm to ourselves (upgraded from 6-bed, lucky us!) for the time we were there to be able to sleep. We enjoyed being the usual tourists and looking at the Kodak Theatre, the Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame. The next day we took the Metro to Universal Studios! Amy was pretty much beside herself with excitement. We headed straight for the Mummy Ride and, as we'd got there early, managed to spend an hour going on that and the Jurassic Park Ride repeatedly. We saw some shows and spent the day topping up our tans, as it ... read more

Sorry for the delay in blog entries! From Queenstown we caught the bus to Tekapo, via Mount Cook (making the journey much longer!), which is the tallest mountain in New Zealand. It looked quite small from where the bus had dropped us off, but we were apparently still 12km away from it! While we were waiting for the bus we saw the tiniest little rabbits in the world. Tekapo is a very small village - not even having an atm! It was really nice and quiet though and the best place in New Zealand to see the stars. We heard something about them making the sky above it a world heritage site but we weren't sure how true that was. We went to look at them at night and fortunately stumbled across a star-gazing expert who ... read more

From Nelson, we headed west to the coast and then south to the very small town (about 7/8 buildings!) of Punakaiki. On the way we travelled through some pretty spectacular mountains, with lots of low lying cloud - another place where Lord of the Rings was apparently filmed. In Punakaiki we stayed in a bizarre lodge type place which was just set back from the coast in thick rainforest. What was even more strange was the 'stargazer tent' we opted for, which was like a small hut with a bed in and a glass roof which meant you could look up and see the stars at night! We went on a couple of walks, with some amazing rocks and coastline views, including the famous 'pancake rocks' which is a tourist hotspot. After just one night we ... read more

We spent one night in Picton, the port which connects the South Island to Wellington. It was a very pretty little place and we did a couple of walks, both with incredible views of the Marlborough Sounds, a collection of inlets which form the northern coast. One particularly was very impressive, and although the walk up was quite an ascent, the view of the town and coast as you got to the top was breathtaking. The next day we moved on to the famous Marlborough wine region and stayed in a small town called Renwick. Surrounding it are about 15 vineyards with miles and miles of grape vines - and all within walking distance from our hostel. We picked 3 which were close and which specifically had free wine tastings! And so we just turned up ... read more