Hello again, On returning from the diving course I decided a lie-in would be a good plan, and in accordance with all previous good plans, I ignored it completely and got up at 7 to go sailing :). This time Troy wasn't around so I went out on a J24 with 4 others. I was put in charge of the headsail, one of the others helmed, one did spinnaker, and one was ballast. As it turned out I ended up doing the headsail, mainsheet, traveller and occasionally tiller because the guy on helm was incapable of multi-tasking, which made it a bit more interesting. We did the first half of the race with few issues, and were coming 3rd, until the crew decided it wouls be a good plan to cut across the main channel in ... read more

Hello again, The flight to Cairns arrived at some crazy hour at night so didn't get to see much of Cairns until the next day, when I wandered around the city for a bit and went to the "Lagoon" (an outdoor pool near the mudflats). That evening the backpackers (Northern Greenhouse) put on a free BBQ and film so me and some German people (Katrin, Chris, Daniel and Consty) chillled out at the backpackers for the evening, which was quite cool - though I did discover that 70% of the people there were German, a fact that I later found to be mirrored in the general population of Cairns. Later on we all headed back down to the Lagoon to try to go swimming again but it had shut at 10 so we chilled out on ... read more

Hello again, now noone can complain that I haven't updated this recently ;) After splitting from Andrew and the kids at the airport, me and Mary got a shuttle to the 4* hotel on the park she had booked us into (she was paranoid about Earthquakes and refused to stay in central Christchurch or in any old buildings). We dropped off our bags in the hotel and headed out through the park into Queenstown, where our first point of stop was the Mauri museum, including the Paua Shell House. The museum was quite interesting, with lots of cultural Mauri stuff going on; the Paua shell house was just strange - basically some strange Kiwi people covered their whole house in the NZ Paua shells. Then we did some "Earthquake tourism" - looking for which buildings had ... read more

Hello again, not updated this for a while so here is the next part: So after a fairly uneventful flight I met up with Matesha at Auckland (City Of Sails) airport and we went back to her house to meet Kris, Kafele (15) and Kishka (12), where we chilled out to Total Wipeout and some appalling bad NZ soaps. The next day I woke up late and wandered down into Mission Bay (Suburb of Auckland) where I decided that it was far too cold to go swimming so went for a walk up the beach instead, followed by Kafele’s dinner speciality: Beans on Toast, and TV. The following morning I went out for a walk round the bush near the house with Kris and Elsa (the dog crossed with either a big black sheep or a ... read more

Bula, So after sleeping for about 12 hours, I had a lovely breakfast of bread and orange juice and had to run to catch the bus transfer to the Yasawa Flyer (the big yellow catamaran that would take me around the islands). Passed the time to Octopus Resort (on Waya Island) with Rajni and Amit, who, upon arrival, were very jealous that they weren't going to be staying there - the resort was picture-perfect - beautiful beach, turquoise water over amazing coral, hammocks hanging up on palm trees. The dorm that me and Ben (backpacker I met on the transfer) were in was in a beachfront Bure, with only 5 beds, of which only me, Ben and one other guy were staying in. The whole atmosphere of the place was made even nicer by the fact ... read more