I am really excited now... I have checked in online and got an aisle seat YAY :-D Leaving tomorrow evening 21:25 from London Heathrow. Can't wait! It is going to be great! Although, I have not yet finished packing my bag, and I do need to do that! I had better get some sleep now otherwise I will not want to get up in the morning, and that will leave me no time to do anything! I will keep you all updated very regularly. Feel free to leave comments :-D... read more

Hello everyone... I can't believe that this is the last entry that I will be writing while on this gap year tour! It has been so much fun, and I don't want it to end because I will have to go back to work, and do all of the boring things again! Thursday was a quiet day for us, we spent most of the morning playing board games with Ellen, and that was fun. At 12 noon, Ellen went to Ranjit's house and Ranee had to go out, so we watched some DVDs, went on the internet and played some card games. It was really relaxing, and we also did a bit of packing. We were all up at 04:45am on Friday morning, and at 5:20am, we drove to another part of Auckland to watch the ... read more

We arrived in Kaikoura on Friday at around 12:00pm, and our afternoon was spent watching movies and TV, and doing our journals and reading... A relaxing afternoon! We were meant to go whale watching yesterday, but when we woke up, the weather was not at its best. It was very windy, cold and raining. We phoned the whale watch company at 9:30am and they told us that due to the sea conditions they had cancelled the trip and we were given a full refund. It was a bit of a dissapointment, but it would not have been nice going out in that weather! So, instead of watching whales, we went on the internet, sat by the fire, played cards and Mel did some washing. Then in the afternoon, we braved the weather and walked into the ... read more

The night that we arrived in Queenstown, we got some shopping for dinner, came back to the hostel and made spaghetti bolognese for dinner. It was really nice, especially as we had some cheese to put on top of it! Then after dinner, we got showered and dressed nicely, and went out to the bar that is attached to the hostel. It was the karaoke evening, so we decided to go and laugh at people doing it! We met up with Jess and another guy called Ron. We had a few drinks, and when the karaoke started, we watched a few people doing it, and then as we had to get up early the next morning, we went to bed at about 11pm. Yesterday morning we woke up at 7am, and had breakfast and got our ... read more

Hi everyone, Mel writing here as yesterday Lauren and I did different things. The glacier walk was absolutely amazing! I thought I'd be freezing but it was warm with my 3 layers. We had to climb up really steep ice stairs then go through tunnels and through really narrow crevasses. It was an adventure and a very tiring day. I found once I stopped moving my muscles ached and my feet have lovely blisters on the back but it was worth it. I've got some pictures so I'll put them up too. The only downside of the day was that I couldn't spend it with Lauren, bit of a shame but we both had good days nonetheless. Today is the 12th, a day before my birthday! It is really weird not being at home for it, ... read more