Blogs from New Plymouth, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 4

Since I've been back in New Zealand I have been mostly focusing on getting a job. Spending my days sending out as many resumes as I can. While the weather is cold (not really if you ask me!) it's been a nice change from Thailand's heat. It's been not very exciting. However, I had bought tickets to an All Blacks rugby game back in March. Pete and I planned a weekend away from Auckland to go see the game down in New Plymouth which is 5 hours south of Auckland. I met Pete at his work place on Friday and we set off after he finished. We drove down to Raglan and stayed there for the night. It was raining for most of the way and got dark so we didn't see much but I had ... read more

New Year,…….still New Plymouth :( As some of you may be aware our campervan that broke down on Xmas eve was still sat in the same spot on the mechanics’ drive a week later on New Years Eve. We’d hoped some work would have been done, but what with there only being 2 working days between Xmas and New Year and even though our mechanic had done some work on these days no one else was open for spare parts / to help him. So after spending nearly the whole day researching everything from car hire to thumbing a lift we decided that our only option was to stay at Hearing Dogs again and forfeit all our great plans of spending new years eve at a beach party with Heather and Ben and then driving to ... read more

“Oh the weather outside’s delightful, But a BBQ lunch sounds frightful, We’ve got no other place to go, Let it glow let it glo, let it glow!” Wishing you all a warm festive Christmas from sunny New Plymouth, hopefully the snow has melted enough for you all to see family and stagger back from the pub! I know we are behind with our blog updates and they will follow once we come out the other side of our Xmas hang over, but for now, here is what we got up to on our Christmas Eve and Christmas day…………. Having just bought our new campervan a few days before, we collected it Xmas eve morning and packed up our stuff from the Hearing Dogs site. We were on the road by midday heading to spend our first ... read more

Hearing dogs New Zealand styley week 1 Wow the journey from Auckland to New Plymouth was a long one. Friends who live here had always said the distances look small but because the main roads are only small single carriageways everything goes a lot slower. Luckily the journey was on a beautifully sunny day and through some amazing scenery. The Taranaki Mountain regions are wonderful if not a little hair raising when your coach is driving round hair pin bends. We arrived into new Plymouth after 7 hours on the coach (it stopped at every tiny little town on the way - some weird places) and were immediately aware of the huge snow caped Taranaki Mountain in the distance and sea on the other side - not everyday you get both and this is something New ... read more

Hello! It's been awhile but thats mainly because we haven't done any more exploring lately! But we did have Krithia and Melvin come and visit us so I thought I'd put the pictures up of that weekend. I also got a new tattoo! Its on my foot, of a pohutukawa flower. It's the New Zealand "Christmas Tree" because the flowers are red and the leaves are very dark green. The trees are beautiful especially when they are in bloom (which is right about now!) Not much else is new, but I would like to say Happy Birthday to my niece Bella who turns one on the 30th! As for our plans...Mark is looking at flights most nights and now has made up his mind, he is going to stay here until the 21st so he won't ... read more