Blogs from Oceania - page 7318

Another great plan of Kathryn's....that went wrong! Recruiting fellow drunken traveller Ian, to get up early in the morning to "Go and see the seals...what an adventure!" didn't quite go to plan. Knocking on his door at the early hours...forcing coffee and toast down his neck and getting all excited about our adventure I was suddenly brought back down to earth to hear that "they've got pups at the mo and no-one is allowed near them!" So much for my adventure. Anyhoo....Ian humoured me and agreed to a bit of sight seeing around Wellington.... ...first we took the Cable Car up to the Botanical Gardens. Hmmm....views were nice but I think the hangover clouded our judgement slightly. Ended up entertaining ourselves in the kids playground and then lying on the grass wishing we hadn't got out ... read more

by caroline DAY 97 Our flight today is 12.10pm, back to Carcacas yet again. The worst thing is saying goodbye and that empty feeling you get. We arrived in Caracas at 6.30pm, at the Catimar hotel we head to the bar for supper, we ordered 2 beers and got 2 strawberry milkshakes good to see our spainish has improved. Day 98 Flight to Dallas is 10.24am, on arriving in Dallas we have to make our way to security where for some reason my camara sets off an explosive alarm, just my luck. Tim's looking a bit panick stricken, anyway no worries apparently this happens all the time. Whats daft is you can just walk out side and have a smoke, with nothing stopping you from just walking out into the street. L A is much the ... read more

Preface Since 1998 when I first visited Tasmania I have wanted to do the Overland Track, one of the worlds great walks. The weather gods did not send welcoming signals then and I wouldn’t have had the time to do it either. Thus, I had to come back… After eight years I was to find that - except for the weather - things have changed. The Overland has become so popular that the park management had to limit the number of walkers which is certainly a good idea. Furthermore, they introduced a hefty 100 dollars walking pass (summer only) which in my opinion is a bit expensive since you don’t have to pay anything if you do just parts of the trek. Anyway, of course we paid for our permit and started our great adventure on ... read more

Moving on from Magnetic Island we headed further up the coast to Cairns. We checked into a another pretty good place called 'The Bohemia Resort'. We had a week to kill in Cairns and the weather wasn't great so we rented a car for a few days. It was a really small crappy car that was a bit like a go-kart. We first went to Kuranda and the Sky rail cable car just north of Cairns. This had the oldest rainforrest in the world. It was nice to see but we've seen quite a bit of rainforest while we've been away and it was raining so you couldn't see that much. We drove around to the Atherton Table lands and visited some nice quaint towns such as Yangaburra and saw the Cathedral fig tree. We also ... read more

Arrived in the Coromandel Peninsular with Magic Bus on Friday. Fantastic YHA hostel in Whitianga (pronounced Fitianga) aptly named "'On the Beach"' and my bunk has fantastic sweeping views of Buffalo Beach through massive bay windows. On the way here we did a 40 minute walk to Cathedral Cove which consists of two lovely bays separated by a large rock archway. Also went to Hot Water beach where, at low tide, you can dig your own thermal pool in the sands and soak in hot water. We got there just before low tide, but nevertheless crossed the beach armed with our spades! The tide wasn't low enough to successfully dig our own pool, however even just by sinking your feet deep into the sand you could feel the hot water below, often too hot to leave ... read more