Sorry for the long silence! It's due to a cross between the excitement of my birthday weekend and the lack of computer access... Last I left off, if I remember correctly, we were having a ball with our South African brothers (who we are now proper facebook friends with and will be visiting in the future!). Well, we parted ways in Wellington, and Tay and I didn't quite know what to do with ourselves. So we decided to check out the Te Papa museum, which everyone we talked to had been raving about. This FREE museum was packed with art, history, culture, science, and basically everything New Zealand. I was thrilled to learn that they had the world's ONLY displayed colossal squid! We had fun wandering through the exhibits and experiencing things such as an earthquake ... read more

I have neglected the blog this past week- I apologize. So here's the summary: Monday- we FINALLY left Auckland and took a bus east and then a bus north to arrive in the small town of Whitianga (Maori lesson: Wh="F" sound). From there we made our way to the even smaller town of Matarangi, where we stayed with a natural medicine student named Scott, who fed us a very generous, healthy dinner upon arrival. Tuesday- we headed back into town to catch a ferry across the inlet and walked along the white cliffs for a few hours. We also made a stop at the Hot Water Beach, but to our dissappointment it was high tide. To make up for this, we visited the Lost Spring thermal spa- a bit of a splurge but so deserved after ... read more

Kia Ora! After 48 hours of traveling madness, my sister, Taylor, and I made it to our first couchsurfing stop in Auckland. Of our 5 flights over here, 4 were delayed, but somehow we ended up landing only 15 minutes later than expected. The biggest bump in the road, however was in LA, where we were told we couldn't go to New Zealand without return tickets or an itinerary proving we were eventually leaving the country. Like something out of the Amazing Race, we found a computer and booked tickets from Auckland to Sydney for a total of $308 in under 15 minutes. Charlie Sheen calls that winning. We also got to spend 5 hours on the beach in Fiji, collecting shells and enjoying a beautiful sunrise. Movies and people-watching kept us highly entertained on the ... read more