Our second day in Paihia was very chilled, involving a walk along the beach, watching a boat race, as well as visiting the markets. After leaving the sunny shores of the Bay of Islands for cold, chilly, Auckland, we arrived back at Sue’s house for a last cosy and comfortable night before our travels. We’d actually planned to spend a few more days in Auckland, and visit some of the islands nearby, but the buses down south were becoming less frequent, due to it...

So, after 2 flights (Brisbane - Sydney, Sydney - New Zealand) we arrived in Auckland, in the dead of night (after immigration, getting to the hotel then sorting out a burst shampoo bottle in David's bag it was gone 2am!). The next 2 days we spent at Sue's house, recovering and seeing a tiny bit of Auckland, as well as the beautiful NZ countryside. We're returning for an extra 4 days in Auckland though so plenty more to see and do coming up :) After our 2 days...

We managed to dodge the rain on the way to the bus stop in Byron, which is lucky because in the few minutes it will rain, it really rains and there's no escape! It did this on and off over the next few days in the Gold Coast, so while we had some sunny moments, we didn't really get a beach day or amazing weather. Nevertheless, we still got to experience some of the Gold Coast and finally also cross into Queensland! The hostel we'd chosen was quite far away from t...

After taking much longer than most, and stopping off in a variety of NSW towns, we finally arrived for our 3 days in Byron Bay. As we predicted, the bus emptied as we arrived in Byron and we spilled onto the busy street, filled with Backpackers, tourists and shops! Our tired selves immediately got tricked into entering a touristy shop, where they tried to sell us a travel package! But after escaping the clutches of ‘Happy Travels’, we set off on the very shor...

As we made our way up to the north of New South Wales, we were getting a bit tired of spending hours every day on a bus, so we decided to break up the journey by visiting little towns on the way. One of these towns I had read about in an article on underrated places to visit on the East Coast. This was Yamba, only a short drive from Coffs Harbour (luckily, because the Greyhound air con broke and began dropping water on everyone!) From what I knew already, we wer...