hey all!

East coast is Chavvy, with a capital C.

Just a very quick post - We're racing down the East coast in our new car, at Rockhampton now. Weather has been pretty stormy, but now as we're down south of Queensland, it's not as humid. The car is playing up a little, I have to admit - Ho hum, we'll look back and laugh one day I'm sure? :)

We're planning to stay in Sydney longer now, so maybe get there a week before Xmas eve, hence the 5 hour-a-day drives here (which still gets us no-where - Oz is TOO big!) :)

"Welcome to tropical Cairns."

Boy, is it HOT and HUMID. I mean that in all seriousness. It's averaging about 33 degrees at the moment. If it was dry heat I probably wouldn't complain this much :) But we've heard the further south we go, the dryer the heat.

Cairns being a primary spot for buying a car, as travellers start and finish their trips here, we had decided to buy a car here and drive it to Perth in the upcoming 5 months (some 10,000 miles ahead of us). It's been a bit hell-ish trawling around dodgy car dealers, but after a long 4 days, we've got it. It's a red Ford Falcon 1994 Sedan.

The dealer, going by the name 'Spiro', is an old drunken, rude man to put it simply. Some may even wonder why we're buying off him? Well, the price. We've parted with $3500 today, which is one of the cheapest cars we've seen so far, and by far with the lowest kilometres done and in reasonable nick. It's a bit damaged in a couple of areas but after seeing some expensive rust-buckets, this came out top. We've done all the official paperwork through the Dept of Transport ourselves, just to reassure ourselves of anything dodgy, but it all went through fine (phew!)

A few snagging problems, but he's sorted them out (although unwillingly).

One point though - literally 1 hour after buying the car, a Japanese couple rocked up outside our hostel with THE nicest, newest, better car for just over what we paid Spiro - Bummed Out. Due to paperwork and cooling off period bullshit, we can't get our money back as we've signed papers and transferred registration names etc. (Nilesh & Jo - It even has WA registration plates till May 2009!) We're majorly bummed about this but have to look past it! The couple selling it are seriously genuine too :( Anyway.. Let's hope our car makes it to Perth with no problems and then maybe we won't feel this bad!

Anyway, to the point - Cairns. We, personally, quite like it. It's got the whole Esplanade water-front thing going on, but it remains dignified as it isn't as tacky as most promenades normally are. There are also night markets, street entertainment and is always buzzing every night so it keeps us busy and happy. Cairns is nothing like what I expected; I suppose that's the good thing about travelling - that element of suprise.

We've already done Great Barrier Reef snorkelling, which was cool but I wish we went to further out reefs where there was more marine life. You always hear how there is dead reef around, and as much as you try to avoid it, you won't find a company (charging a reasonable rate) who will take you far away, where no other has explored. We managed to see an enormous sea turtle, lots of colourful fish, and other strange looking sea creatures.

Travellers Oasis is the highly recommended hostel we've been based in for the past 6 days, and it serves its purpose well - but the lack of A/C is not cool. Only since being here and speaking to people, have we heard that Cairns has a tropical climate (well, we didn't really need telling once we stepped out of the plane - Duh). Darwin also has a similar climate, but that will hopefully be travelled during the end of our stay in Australia.

We leave Cairns the day after tomorrow, heading for Townsville, a five hour drive away. It's a month today till we are in Sydney for the Christmas & New Year period - bring it on! We also meet Hinesh & Tanya there, looking forward to seeing a friendly face. Tonight we are going to the Casino near the Esplanade to win the car money back - wish us luck! ;-)

Ah, the time has come to leave New Zealand tonight! After being here just shy of two months, it feels both good and bad to be leaving..

The aspects I liked about New Zealand were:

- Undoubtedly, the views & scenery
- Cafe/coffee culture in the cities, especially Dunedin's - best coffee you can get
- Escapeism - How, within a few hours drive, you can go from a busy city to snowy mountain bliss
- Ease of travel
- The adrenaline-fuelled activities
- The outstanding tourism organisation system

The things I didn't like were:

- The weather, at most times
- Intercity coach drivers
- How North island resembled England a little too much
- And of course.. bed bugs!

I'm really excited and curious to be heading for Oz, however, I do find it a little daunting due to the sheer size of the country. Let the next adventure roll on.. :)

I'll be honest - I'm slightly tipsy as I write this blog. We've just come back from a full days' wine tasting tour and we consumed a lot of wine.. The four wineries we visited were The Mud House, where we had lunch which was included in the price, Torlesse Wines, Pegasus Bay and Waipara Springs. The whole Waipara region, just North of Christchurch, is famous for it's wineries.

After the tour, I asked to be dropped into the city centre, avoiding the 20 minute walk into town, to put photos up.

I think the two of us actually learned some wine etiquette and knowledge, that's a plus point, right? Being a lightweight always gives it the edge though ;) Lunch was amazing as you'll see from the photos, I think we were expecting a backpacker tour but it was so posh - We weren't complaining! My new favourite wine is White Reisling. Any boxed gifts welcome :) x

Ah, this is the way New Zealand should be seen! In 25degree heat, with full sun out :)

We've taken advantage of the weather and been pretty busy the past few days.

From Christchurch, we went to Kaikoura, with the idea of staying two nights there, however, it slightly disappointed us so we ended up staying only the one night. The highlight was the seafood. The town is crazy for Crayfish! So oBviously I had to be part of it and bought myself a whole crayfish, freshly caught locally that morning. I followed a simple but tasty recipe - lemon, olive oil & cracked pepper. What a beaut! Bit of salad on the side and there I had one of the healthiest dinners I've had so far :)

Now on to the fun stuff. As the weather was looking great for today, I decided to go ahead and book the Swimming with Dolphins adventure in Akaroa. Ketan didn't want to come seeing as he's already swam with dolphins elsewhere, so I was on my lonesome (first time in 2 and a half months - wierd!).

After the two hour shuttle journey from Christchurch to Akaroa, I immediately felt the charm and warm from the small town harbour. It has a very 'French' feel to it, even the road names begin with 'Rue de le' blah blah.. The cafes all had French names etc, you get the jist.

So - the dolphin swim. Well, firstly, I had to get into a vvvvery tight wetsuit. I was a wetsuit-virgin and had been warned that they aren't meant to be comfortable or look good - they got that bit right. Still, after much streching and jumping around I was successfully sucked in (as the photos will prove). We were told on the boat by our skipper, Andrew, how to spot the Hector's dolphins as they had a small black fin which pokes out of the water. We spotted a few about 10 minutes out of the harbour and therefore all got into the water. FREEZING. The wetsuits are supposed to provide warm! But we got used to the cold after half an hour. The swim was awesome. The dolphins were so playful, they'd come within a metre of you swimming around and poking out, blowing water through their blowhole. In total, we were told there were 13 dolphins in the space of 45mins we were in the water - amazing! Hector's dolphins are the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world, so it was pretty special being surrounded by them. They were so cute and small! I don't have any photos of me in the water with dolphins but I tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to snap photos of my own once back in the boat, as you'll see.

It's quite a surreal feeling to think we only have two more days in New Zealand. We are using Christchurch as a base for our last week here, so I've uploaded some random photos of the town on Flickr too. Tomorrow we're going on a days' wine-tasting tour - oh yeah ;-) Hope you're all well at home! Keep reading x

Enjoy! x

We were recommended to go to Mount Cook, seeing as it is Australasia's highest mountain peak coming in at over 10,000 ft. Mount Cook is situated in Aoraki National Park, where there are 27 mountains, 22 of which are the highest in Australasia. We were staying at the YHA which was a great little place, had a cabin feel to it. The village (if they could call it that) had no supermarket, consisted of about 10 buildings and had no phone reception. The view from our room was awesome! We were lucky enough to get AMAZING weather for the two days we were there for, I mean cloudless.

Nilesh and Jo recommended the Red Tarns track at sunset, as the sun sets on Mount Cook leaving a red glow glazed all over the mountain. Little did we know, (and why didn't they tell us?!) that the track was over 1000 steps long! Oh. My. God. Steps are actually the bane of my life, and not being prepared for this was not cool. And, to add to it all, we were late leaving the hostel because of my faffing around, so we had to like sprint up to make it in time for sunset. We made it - with 5 minutes to spare. You'll see from the photos how magnificient the view was, but I was a little disappointed as you couldn't see the whole mountain, just 3/4 of it.

I think I took over 50 photos that evening. but I've just put a small selection so I don't bore you :)

The next day, whilst sipping on some Cosmopolitans at the 5* Hermitage hotel round the corner, I wanted to take more photos at sunset. Funnily enough, the view was better this evening! Even though we were on ground level, we could see more of Mount Cook. So, again, a 100 more photos.

After a very relaxed two days in this quiet retreat, it was on our way to Christchurch. It's typical that the weather has now decided to turn very amazing, in our last week in NZ. We're looking at about 20degrees +. Tomorrow we're going to Kaikoura, a small fishing town not far from Christchurch - we've heard great stuff about it (especially the whole catch-your-fish-and-it-eat thing) so I'm looking forward to that. Not sure if I speak for Ketan on the fish side of it!

It's only 1 week till we leave now, and we've still got a bit to fit in. Some advice please - should I go to Akaroa for some dolphin swimming or stay in Christchurch for a well-renowned wine tasting day tour? Hmm...

Wow - a great few days! For those who have not yet read the last post, (and if not, why not?) it was a busy week, so we've taken a few days to relax in the sun.

We're in Queenstown at the moment and have met some friends from the Fiji Experience so it's been fun.

The weather here on the first day was Gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky. We thought we'd take this opportunity to go up the Skyline Gondola and do 'luge-ing' (not sure how to spell it). As you'll see in the photos (yes, that's right, photos are up!), luge-ing is like go-karting but picks up speed faster. It was so fun, even if we did look like geeks wearing the helmets!

The views from the top were AWEsome. We chilled up there for a while and took in the wonderfulness of Queenstown. It is another place which is like an apres-ski town feel to it - like Wanaka (although, personally, I prefer Wanaka).

We were psyched up for the evening purely for Fergburger. Now, Ferburger. AH! It's a burger place here which is nationally famous for being too tasty. We ordered the meatiest thing on the menu, and it served us well :)

Ketan and I were up for a big night, and seeing as there was a little Fiji reunion, we all decided it was about time for a messy night out :) It was good fun catching up with friends we had met 2 months ago, and hearing all their stories about New Zealand - along with hearing ours all over again.

Queenstown is renowned for being THE place for adrenaline junkies because it literally has all the activities available to do such as bunjy jumping, jet boat rides, helicopter rides, luge-ing, skydiving etc. But seeing as both of us are feeling a little cheap we only did the Luge. (Well, really reason is that we're shit scared to do the bunjy). It's a great little town, which for some reason always has the sun beaming down on it - but hey, we're not complaining :)

So, yes I've put up pics of Milford Sound, Dunedin, Stewart Island and Queenstown - too rare!

Hey all, sorry it's been a while since blogging, been in some pretty remote places in the past week hence lack of internet connection.

So the last place I blogged about was Wanaka - a lot has been going on since then. We moved onto a quiet place called Te Anau, which was really just used as a base to get to Milford Sound. We were fortunate enough to stay at a great place called "Rosie's Homestay', which was more like a home than a hostel.

For those of you who don't know, Milford Sound is a fiord which runs 15km from the Tasman Sea and famous for its sheer size of the mountains/cliffs - you'll always find it on people's travel itineraries in NZ.

We were recommended to visit Milford Sound in late afternoon to avoid the tourist-y boats. So, because of this, we had to stay one night at Milford Sound Lodge as a base, as there wasn't a coach going back on the same day.

The following morning we woke up to heavy showers and cloud. But not all was bad. We were told by the locals that they actually prefer the sheer peaks of Milford Sound when it rains as you get to see lush waterfalls throughout the cliffs, and the misty, moody clouds hanging over the peaks. So although the weather was sh*t, we didn't cancel our booking - and boy was that lucky! It was Awesome seeing it in the rain. Just as we expected, there were temporary waterfalls gushing down, the whole vibe to the Sound was so spooky and it really gave it the edge. It's a real shame I can't find a good place to upload photos because that would really explain what I mean!

After a grim sleep at the MS Lodge, it was back to Te Anau for one more night before moving on to Invercargill.

Invercargill is another place which is meant to be the 'chav town' in New Zealand. I admit, it was a little glum but not as bad as the reputation it had. This small town is yet another base for traveller's who want to go to Stewart Island. Stewart Island is a very small island, only a one hour boat ride from Bluff - New Zealand's most southern town. Stewart island (or the officially named 'Rakiura') is renowned for it's bird wildlife and abundance of nature, and for being a very serene little place to relax by the tiny harbour to get away from it all. Not all traveller's have the luxury of going to the island because it's fairly expensive to travel across to, and also the accommodation is highly priced.

Upon arrival, (after THE worst, rocky, sea-sick, scary-like-Titanic boat ride) we were lucky to have a bit of sun, but *really* strong winds. Due to our budget, we allocated two nights here, seeing as the accommodation was costing $160 per night (the lovely Bay Motel). We didn't waste time here, we got straight into the nature side and went on a couple of treks. We were given a bird guide of what would find on the island. Some of the birds were only native to New Zealand and some of the rarest birds in the world. Of course, Ketan and I had absolutely no idea what we saw but it was interesting none-the-less. We came across beautiful secret golden bays, untouched beaches and so on. Oban is the only township on Stewart island and it had a beautiful harbour to it's name, with lush native forests surrounding it - 85% of the island is a National Park. After a relaxing afternoon and some good food down us, it was time for a bit of luxury in our apartment - a TV! All night there were random birds perched on our balcony, including Kaka's, robins, parakeets etc.

The next day the weather was pretty similar. But this was OK because it wasn't raining. We were to go to Ulva island that day, which is officially became a bird sanctuary a couple of years ago. Only a ten minute bumpy ride on a water taxi there, we arrived on the peaceful island. It was absolutely untouched - not a guide, tourist attraction or anything alike in sight. Bliss! There were of course avid bird-watchers ready with their binoculars around - it was good to try something that was so special to some people. During the trek, we pottered around trying to spot all the birds listening for their distinct noises. We were fairly successful in our findings - I bet we probably spotted the rarest birds but we had no idea! 3 hours later it was back to Stewart island for more relaxing. We got a good feel for the islands and what type of people visit them. To bird-watchers and nature-lovers, this place was heaven with a cherry on top.

So a week later from my last post, we are in a city called Dunedin (which is Gaelic for 'Edinburgh').

It's heavily influenced by the Scots and it's a place with a good bit of history to it. So far, we've been here for two nights to chill out a bit. Yesterday we took the Elm Wildlife tour which took us to Otago Peninsula where were in close proximity to sea lions, fur seals, yellow-eyed penguins and other sea-life. It was snowing all day (but not settling) and it was freezing, but it was worth it.

Tomorrow we are off to Queenstown where all the adrenaline-induced activities will take place. We're not sure which one's we'll choose, but let's hope the weather picks up.

I've probably taken my best photos yet in this past week, but as usual, finding a place to upload photos at a reasonable pace has been difficult. I'll keep trying, of course.