Hello again (from NZ)

---

Hello everybody!

Thought we would update you all once again, we are now at my cousin Liz and her husband Dave's place in Auckland. If my memory serves me right (because i haven't took the time out to check!), my last update from Byron Bay was the last time we updated. Since then we travelled up the rest of the east coast of Australia, including visiting Fraser Island, the Whitsunday Islands and some of Mandy's relatvies- all during which we continued to have the time of our lives, and got a nice tan in the process!
We happenned to be lucky with our fraser island trip and got in with a good group. At one stage, after leaving it to the last minute on my insistence "it will be fine, there will be loads of spaces", it looked like we were to be dissapointed as most tours were fully booked. So, having our hand forced, we booked onto a "self-drive" tour, which was quite a misleading term as neither me or Mandy drove all trip, instead leaving the driving to the other members of the trip. Nevertheless, over the next few days we got to know them all really well, and had an amazing time. For those of you that don't know, Fraser Island is an island made up of pure white sand, supposedly more than can be found in the sahara, set against a backdrop of lush rainforest and emerald blue lakes. The highlight of the trip other than the people we met has to be getting up early one morning (not so good) and from a viewpoint called indian heads watched tiger sharks in their natural environment (extremely good). The rest of the day we spent first in a creek skimming a large, thin piece of wood down, chasing after it, jumping on it and attempting to "surf" if down the half foot deep creek. Key word: attempting. Mandy managed to record a video clip of a particularly bad attempt of me "attempting" aforementioned, which i'm sure you'll see when we get back. And then we rounded the day off playing tick rugby with a frisbee in one of the lakes before heading back for a bbq and beers under the stars, it was awful :-)
We are both agreed that a month doesn't really do justice to a place like Australia, as the rest of the time we spent there, although fantastic, did seem a little rushed. But if that can be said of Australia, then so can it too of New Zealand. Up to now we have had fun days in Christchurch follewed by even more fun nights, swam with dolphins in Kaikoura, rode the famous inter-island ferry, visited the amazing Te Papa museum in Wellington, done the Northern Circuit come Tongariro Pass in the Tongariro National Park passing active volcanoes and massive craters along the way, seen thermal pools in Rotorua and jumped from 12,000ft into thin air- and we have but scraped under the surface of New Zealand.
I think the highlight of it all has to be the skydive, like i say from 12,000ft. We both have a DVD of it, so i'm sure we'll also bore you with that when we're back, along with the millions of photos we seemed to have ammassed. Speaking of which, we haven't put any on this time because we didn't think ahead to burn them onto a CD, but we plan to update one last time from a golden beach in Fiji, our next destination in a couple of days time.
So until then, love to you all and hope you are all well

Chris and Mandy x x x

---

Comments

[deleted_7535]

Looking forward to hearing it all over a pint in the next couple of weeks. Keep having fun, and look forward to more photos. lots of love hx