Blogs from New Zealand, Oceania - page 2393

Hi guys, As most of you already know, I will be heading to the States for a month on 27th December with Shannon, Amanda and Sunita - arriving back on 24th January. I have been to the states before but this will be my first trip away with a bunch of friends so should be fun. This whole trip stemmed from a rather wishful thinking msn conversation with Sunita that went along the lines of "hey, lets have new years this year in Hawaii", "ha! yea, sure, lets do it" (half sarcastically). Somehow, it actually ended up happening, we also roped in Amanda and Shannon who were keen on the idea also. Since Sunita has already lived in California for a year, this "new years in Hawaii" idea then changed to "well, while we are up ... read more

We continued to fly onward toward Auckland. The flight was rather uneventful, but quite uncomfortable. I tried to occupy myself with the movies available, but found the lack of comfort distracting. Finally, at 5:30am we arrived in Aukland. We had to move through customs. First, it’s the passport check. Agents review our arrival pass and passport then they give us the official stamp of entry. We then collect our bags. With our bags on trolleys, we proceed through agriculture declaration, then the final bag x-ray for those like myself, whom have nothing to declare. After clearing customs, the group had to push our bags to the domestic terminal. The terminals were 1 kilometer apart and we had well over an hour before boarding. Thus, the walk was leisurely. We took our time taking photos of the ... read more

A storm blew in over night and it is rainy with a lot of wind. There isn’t much to do on Stewart Island when it is raining so we leisurely have breakfast in our room before going into Oban to spend a few hours on the internet researching lodging for the balance of our trip. Back at our motel room I phone several hotels and make some reservations. Some of the hotels we want to stay in are booked so we start to look at alternatives. We run down to the pizza shop/movie theatre, which is very busy, and spend a few hours having pizza for dinner. Back at our motel we watch a heavy fog roll into the bay, watch television and go to bed. ... read more

We are on the West Coast and it is very wet, very wild and pretty windy. We left lovely hot and sunny Wanaka on Monday morning and since we got onto the coast the weather has been so different. It is currently chucking it down and has been all day. I have not seen it rain so hard! It rains 250 days a year here so I guess it is to be expected! We hope to spend the next few days exploring the glaciers but I am not so sure now. We may well be exploring the hostel instead! We were in Haast yesterday afternoon which has to be the sandfly capital of NZ! You could not stand still for a second unless you wanted to be bitten alive. They just swarm in when ever you ... read more

Cape Reinga. My objective, to reach the most northern tip of New Zealand. Accomplished December 18th, 2005. My present travelmate and roommated Geshe headed off Saturday morning for a weekend of fun and frolick, and stressful driving. I was very excited by my van had finally be completed to my liking and I bought all the necessary things for the trip (camp chairs, cooler, bug spray, camp table) The drive took about 4 hours to reach Cape Reinga. We stoped at a Kauri Museum and experienced the "Kauri Staircase". If you've seen the previous pictures I've posted on here of Kauri Trees, you will understand why I had to visit it, and why it was so impressive. We then headed straight up to the Cape. The last 20 kms of Highway One (why they call it ... read more