Page 9 of thetravelbugtribe Travel Blog Posts


Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Whangarei March 31st 2007

Some photos of the aftermath of Cyclone Becky on Hikurangi Swamp. They are either taken from our house, or from down in the valley below us. POSTSCRIPT - since I am updating this due to that server crash, I'll add that this 150 year storm was followed three months later by another one! Similar views that time too, but with more trees down as the wind was very strong second time around.... read more
Swamp Road
Swamp from our house
Swamp from our house again

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Northland March 17th 2007

We're going to try and post some information and photos about any trips around New Zealand we do. We live in an amazingly beautiful country, and want to share it with all who are interested. Here is the first NZ entry - a brief description of our trip the other weekend up to Russell. We decided to spend the last Sunday before the football (soccer) season on a day out. You know, go for a bit of a tiki tour, have lunch somewhere...nothing too taxing... so 314km later...! We started off quite early (luckily!) and took off up State Highway One. The plan was to go up the old coast road to Russell. This we did do, but our couple of stops along the way took a lot longer than we'd planned. First stop was at ... read more
Terns
Pompallier Mission House, Russell

Asia » Brunei » Bandar Seri Begawan February 3rd 2007

On the way back to NZ we stopped off in Brunei for another 24 hours, to see more and to break up the journey. We had one thing we wanted to see, and that was some Proboscis Monkeys. We were planning originally to take a regular water taxi, as the tours were expensive. But then we found a company with a special on in February, and persuaded them to let us have that same price in January (well, it was close to the end of the month!) This meant we still paid a bit more than with a regular water taxi, but had longer out, a better guide, and a better chance of seeing monkeys. If there werent any in the first couple of places the regular guys took you to, it was a case of ... read more
Monitor lizard
On the Brunei River

Europe » United Kingdom » England February 2nd 2007

We had a great time, driving around some of the countryside visiting people and places. We went through some ancient areas, Woodhenge near Salisbury, and Avebury (Long Barrows, Stone Circles) on our way to see a friend in Cheltenham. As fascinating as the barrows and circles were, it was about 4C out, with a wind chill taking the temp way below zero. We also stopped at Bletchley Park, home of the Enigma and former home of GCHQ. Although some rooms and huts were closed for winter (open weekends only) what we saw was really interesting. Colossus, the first computer, was up and running, nearly complete and finished. One morning we even had some snow, all of a couple of inches. Our first for many years (since Morocco maybe, even then it was just in patches). However, ... read more
Avebury
T3D

Europe » United Kingdom » England » Hampshire January 21st 2007

We had a restful start to our visit here, but the past few days have been getting busy again. So what have we been doing since I last wrote... The Saints game was good, even if we could only manage a 0-0 draw. We won yesterday though, and are still fighting for promotion. We had a lovely meal out for Mum and Dads birthday last Saturday night. We went to a local pub/restaurant and had some good food and local ale. Smoking is still allowed inside pubs here! The beginning of the week we just relaxed, our first real break since before Christmas, what with working nearly all the time and with 8 busy days getting to the UK, we were pretty tired! We got ourselves a hire car and pottered about the local area, had ... read more

Europe » United Kingdom » England » Hampshire January 13th 2007

It was really windy coming into Heathrow and the plane rolled all over the place, and we landed fast and hard. We got down to Southampton quickly by bus, and were met by an friend, Karry, who kindly drove us the rest of the way to New Milton. We spent the day at my Grans house, waiting to surprise Mum and Dad in the evening. Despite it being quite mild out, Gran had the fire lit and we were all very sleepy by the time Mum and Dad came round. I think we managed to surprise them nicely. It took a while for it to sink in that we were there! We stayed the night with Gran and moved up to Mum and Dads house last night. Today we are off into Southampton for some football ... read more

Middle East » United Arab Emirates » Dubai January 12th 2007

We'd liked to have written a bit sooner about Dubai, but the place we were staying had all these controls on the internet, and our host was never there for us to get him to relax some of them. So here we are, now in the UK, writing about what we got up to in Dubai. Despite all the internet controls, we stayed with a great host, Michael, in an awesome apartment by Dubai marina. We were on the 38th floor with awesome views along the beach, about halfway between the Jumeira Palm and Jebel Ali Palm developments. Luxury I'm sure we could become accustomed to! We managed to see and do quite a bit in Dubai, thanks to having a hire car. I guess if we'd had to pay for accomodation, the budget might not ... read more
Jumeirah Mosque
Madinet Jumeirah
Madinet Jumeirah and the Burj Al Arab

Asia » Brunei » Bandar Seri Begawan January 6th 2007

We've had a busy couple of days in Brunei since the last post. After writing that, we went to Gadong night market, spending a whopping NZ$2.50 on dinner for two. Deep fried vegetable bits and pieces and this thick pancake thing full of chopped nuts, sugar and chocolate powder. Yesterday we went on a trip to Ulu Temburong National Park. It was a 45 minute water taxi ride from BSB to Bangar (mangroves, some jungle, crocodiles, herons & egrets, monkeys), then 20 minutes drive to the tour company "lodge" where we had morning tea. From there we took off in a traditional longboat, only they are now powered by outboards. The river was going pretty fast, and got wet and bumpy over the rapids. It was another 45 minute ride up river to the park. That ... read more
Gadong Night Market
Ulu Temborung National Park
Ulu Temborung National Park

Asia » Brunei » Bandar Seri Begawan January 4th 2007

The flight over here was long and boring. We love reading and watching movies, but there is only so much of either we can do, especially when stuck in cattle class. We were met by our Hospitality Club host ,Paul, and went back to his house briefly before going out for dinner. Colin and Paul has beef and chicken skewers - satay - from a street stall. I was full from plane food - not the best food but there was plenty of it. Even at 9pm, it was 27C outside and drizzling. Today we headed into downtown Bandar Seri Begawan (capital of Brunei, population about 100 000 out of 350 000 total in Brunei). We did the touristy things of course to start with. We went to the very good Brunei museum and Malay Technological ... read more
Kampung Ayer
Water Taxi

Oceania » Cook Islands » Rarotonga September 24th 2003

Last day today. Since we last wrote, we’ve had a couple more dives and done some more walking. The first dive was at some caves, not overly exciting but we did see a huge octopus swimming around before backing into a hole to hide from us. The last one was back at the Mataora for another night dive. This one was badly organised though with some very inexperienced divers kicking up silt, dropping torches, swimming into people…not that I am saying we are experienced or anything, but we are better than that! Between those dives we took the bus round to Muri beach/lagoon. We had a look at a couple of historic boat launch sites. The first one, marked by a stone circle, was where boats were supposedly launched for the great migration to NZ, the ... read more
Walking up inland valleys
From the Needle / Cross Island trail
Colin Diving 2




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