Yes, I am still alive and well and not yet in prison, kidnapped, or sold into prostitution. I even talked to strangers and got a little drunk. Amazing I am still alive I know. So, the flight was LONG. And the food was horrible, but I had to eat it being that my flights were so incredibly long. Anyway, got to Bangkok late last night, checked into my hostel, all was well...I managed the public transportation pretty well on no sleep. The people here are great. I have not felt uncomfortable at all. No high pressure sales tactics like I was expecting either. So, today I wandered around the city, my feet are killing me! I went to a market full of loads of crap, aisles and aisles all selling the same junk. Ate some questionable ... read more

Entry by Ryan: Wednesday July 11th, Its seems today we did nothing but drive, after waking up and packing the car we drove out of Invercargil to the Catlins conservation park on our quest to find penguins. As always we drove through plenty of beautiful scenery along the coast and arrived at our destination. For once we arrived at our destination to coincide with the proper tides, this time to see a petrified Jurassic forest. Walking along the rocks on top of the petrified forest was cool, but what we had really wanted to see was penguins, there were also frequently dolphins is the bay but we were not as excited to see those. Unfortunately we were not lucky at this beach with any wildlife, except the usual seagulls. So we decided to continue our search ... read more

Well even though the trip from the north island to the south island took us from east to west it certainly seems a lot colder here. After departing the ferry Friday afternoon in Picton we drove west to Nelson, one of the major wine regions in the country. However no wine tasting for us. Unfortunately, that night we choose what was probably our worst hostel yet, in a creepy old house from a horror movie kind of way…it wasn’t awful but a little run down and a little dirty, plus it was supposed to have free internet but that wasn’t working. Saturday morning we got some information on the nearby Abel Tasman National Park, then we wandered around the city of Nelson and did a quick heritage walk before departing to Takaka where we would stay ... read more

We started off our week on Monday by heading out to the Coramandel Peninsula, just east of Auckland. Our first night was spent camping at the trailhead to the Pinnacles, a very cold night, where we seemed to be the only people in the entire park camping. The trail to the Pinnacles the next day was an 8 hour hike, which despite camping at the trailhead, we got a late start and made it back right at sunset. The trail was awesome with scary suspended footbridges, many beautiful rock staircases, and steller views. The next day, Wednesday, we went to the Waiau Waterworks, a quirky little tourist trap with all of their main attractions powered by water. The best part about this place was the children’s area though, with rides such as flying bicycles, a hamster ... read more

Sorry for our absence of posts in the past few weeks, but we have been either busy or on the road unable to find any internet. So we’ll try to sum everything up here. The past week was spent driving around the northlands, the area north of Auckland, prior to that we spent a few more days in Auckland and got the car all ready for the trip. So we’ll just jump right to the road trip. We first stared by taking a weekend trip to Julie and Monique’s parents beach house in Algies bay, just about an hour north of Auckland on the east coast. The bay was really beautiful and their house was great with mandarin trees right in the backyard. The first night there we went to the bar to watch the All ... read more