Blogs from Oceania - page 6523

We arrived in Christchurch gone midnight (cheap flights, eh? tsk!) on a Monday night, and must have jumped into the friendliest taxi in town, because apart from chatting non-stop and bombarding us with questions during the journey, once outside the hostel the driver then proceeded to spend 20 minutes giving us better advice than we've ever got form any dedicated tourist information office. He got out maps, brochures, business cards and discount vouchers, and sent us to our room with pretty much our trip round the South Island fully planned. What a nice guy! We mentioned in our previous blog that we had planned to rent a flat for a few weeks over the Christmas and New Year period, to recharge batteries and sample a bit of "normal life" for a little while. We didn't fancy ... read more

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What goes up must come down so we headed back down south after four chilled out days, doing very little. Having seen how little there was on the way up we braved a nine hour drive to our next overnight stop in Kalbarri. Kalbarri is a little town on the edge of the national park of the same name. Having driven forever through millions of bushes we didn't fancy seeing any more so we gave the park a miss. The town itself is really small , like everywhere up here, but its nice enough with the Merchantson river sprucing it up a bit. Hostel was pretty good too, having got sick of pasta and source (our staple diet) we hit the chippy and drank some goon! Goon is the name they give to four liter casks ... read more

Starting off the New Year, after taking down our wet tent, we headed off to Thames, the gateway town to the Coromandel. (or as I keep saying, Comorandel). We booked into a campsite here for 1 night as all others seemed to be booked up until 2nd, it was a nice campsite too, in a tranquil setting of a butterfly farm, as we arrived to put the tent up, it rained again (think its following us). We then had a couple of nights booked at Harbourside campsite in Whitianga (pronounced Fity-anga) North East of the Coromandel, Mercury Bay. On the way up the East coast we stopped at Hahei and at Hot water beach John had a surf, without wetsuit, just board shorts and rashie. At hot water beach, you can dig down and find ... read more

Went on a Dolphin cruise for 4 hours. Unfortunately there were no dolphins to be seen anywhere around the Bay of Islands. It was a nice cruise though around the vast number of islands. Nearly all of them are uninhabited and it is illegal to camp on most of them. We met up with Lee's cousin who is staying in Paihia at had some seafood in the restaurant with an aquarium inside. Drove up to the bottom of 90 mile beach and stayed in a camp site overnight... read more