Darja

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- macauAsia » Macau » Macau July 4th 2011 Published: July 7th 2011 « Previous EntryA PRIVATE BLOG ENTRY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oct 26 Macau Took a catamaran ferry over to here. Fast, but rough. For an hour we all either slept or quietly starred out the window…anything to keep the stomach intact. Not too much in Macau. It is on old Portuguese settlement that has been turned into the Vegas of Asia. 33 casino on this small rock. The downtown core was interesting as it is old, but other than that it was just another long day. Back in Hong Kong our group of six went for a Mexican dinner and desert. Best meal since coming to China. China is quite the country. We were definitely shown what the government wants to show off…the glit... read more

March 24 Lake Tekapo, Today has been primarily a travel day. We left Dunedin around 8 this morning and arrived here in Lake Tekapo in the late afternoon. We did make one interesting stop on the way here to see the Moeraki Boulders. These are huge spherical boulders sitting on the edge of the ocean. They are created from a combination of sandstone and lichen pressed together over the eons. The way they are scattered along the shore looks like the giants were bowling and just left their balls where they stopped rolling. The country side through to here is stunning with the mountains and glacier blue rivers running through the landscape. There are a number of dams that create lakes that add to the local colour schemes. Lake Tekapo itself is equally pretty. We stayed ... read more

Mar. 15 Wanaka Nelson has a competitor for my favorite NZ community. Wanaka has it all: a beautiful blue mountain lake, hiking trails, friendly community, decent shopping, restaurants, and an overall peaceful attractiveness to it. We spent our first day here doing a lot of walking. We headed out of town about 2km where we started up to the view point on Iron Mountain. This hill is about 260 m high and took a good 40 minutes to climbed to the top. But the views made it all worth while. We had a 360 degree view of Wanaka and the surrounding areas. Lakes, mountains, rivers, and fields. We then headed down the hill on a much steeper incline that took us down the hill to a place called Puzzle World. Now Puzzle World totally lived up ... read more

March 5 - 8 Wellington, We headed to Wellington after the National Park and where there for 4 nights. First night was in a Backpackers that’s claim to fame is that royalty stayed there 60 years ago. Since then it has been on a downhill slide. The next couple of nights was in the YHA hostel which was much better. Wellington is the third largest city in NZ. That is changing though as people move out of Christchurch, making Wellington the second largest. This is a place that when the sun shines it is wonderful, but not so when raining. It was raining for the first 3 days we were there. However, the city has a magnificent (free) museum that took us the better part of the three days to get through. Our last day the ... read more

Feb. 26 Rotorua We spent our last day in Paihia just enjoying the place. The next day our hop on hop off bus (Magic Bus) picked us up at our hostel and then drove us the scenic route to Auckland. We made stops along the way at a forest to view the world’s 2nd oldest tree - at about 2000years old - and at other pretty view areas. Otherwise, uneventful. Auckland was just an overnight and then a bigger Magic bus picked us up and we headed south. Again, lots of stops as we took the scenic route. Then that afternoon we hopped off our bus at a farmer’s field to take The Hobbiton Movie Set & Farm Tours. It was an afternoon well spent. From there we had to take a smaller bus into Rotorua, ... read more