JuliaAndDan

The final frontier is upon us as we land down in Los Angeles ready for the short journey to Santa Monica, a trendy beach city nearby. From Santa Monica we decided to do a couple of activities, the first being a tour round Hollywood, included a look at some very nice houses owned by celebrities. Personally i felt this was a bit invasive, however I don't have that much sympathy for them when you see the life they have to live. The highlight of the tour for our driver seemed to be pointing out the ambulance that Michael Jackson was taken to hospital in... everyone in Hollywood does seem very strange and obsessed with everything to do with celebrities! The other stops on the tour included the designer Rodeo Drive (from Pretty Woman), Hollywood Boulevard, and ... read more

For our last week in Australia we decided we needed to do something a bit more adventurous, so we reverted back to the olden days, hired a campervan for the week, and headed away from the East coast backpacker trail. The first port of call in our Jucy campervan was the Daintree Rainforest, via the expensive town of Port Douglas. The Daintree rainforest is one of the oldest in the world and was the location of our first tour; Bruce Belcher's Crocodile Explorer tour. We all boarded the small boat and went cruising up the Daintree river in search of some crocs. We managed to spot about 10 different crocs ranging from a 1ft one that was only 3 months old to a fully grown male adult at a size of 5ft and very fat, hence ... read more

We arrived in Brisbane and immediately had to walk a kilometre uphill, in 33 degree heat to our hostel. Not the most fun aspect of travelling. Our hostel was brand new and very funky, with a nice rooftop swimming pool. We spent 3 days in Brisbane but didn't really do much apart from meeting Dans friend from school who now lives here. A very short journey from Brissie is Straddie (Stradbroke island), where we stopped for a few days to have a break from the city life. We stayed right beside the beach and had a great time body boarding, and climbing on the rocks by the sea. In the evening we watched the new moon rising from the horizon which was a B-E-A-utiful sight. The following day we did a board walk along the cliffs, ... read more

Our first few days in Ozzie were ridiculously hot (high 30's), a great and sweaty start to the 10 weeks we have here. We couldn't believe how busy Sydney felt, think it must have been the result of living in a capital city with only a 400,000 population for the last year! We'd come at a great time, as on our first night we saw the Chinese New year parade and a short film festival in the park. There was also some of the build up to the Mardi Gras parade, which is Sydney’s second biggest event of the year after New Years Eve... We spent our first few days looking around the city, taking in the amazing opera house, harbor bridge and all of the city centre parks. We saw hundreds of large bats which ... read more

Our next destination was the Bay of Islands, with a stop over for a day in Auckland so we could put up some posters of our car. We spent one night in the campsite with the smallest kitchen in New Zealand (unofficially). It was not all that bad though as we did end up getting some free food from a couple going home. Anyway next stop was Whangarei, in the Northland. It was not that much of an interesting place itself, but nearby was Tutukaka, home to one of the top ten dive sites in the world. We got a boat over to the Poor Knights Island, where apparently the tropical current is the reason for fantastic marine life. We thought it was a bit of a myth though as the water was freezing (21°C), but ... read more