Hi All, After dragging myself away from the lovely bay of islands I've spent a couple of days in mercury bay another small costal location and the last 3 days in rotorua a town based on a geothermal site which smells somewhat of boiled eggs but has some cool hot pools, spas and geysers and a good amount of activities on offer. In mercury bay we really had only the 1 full day to play with so our little group of 3 currently (Me, Rich and Ben) headed off on a bike...

Hey everyone, Just a quick update, finished my diving course yesterday so I'm now a certified PADI diver (wahey) and can now say that i dont intend to do any more exams for the next few years (which I said in May but well that didn't last long). I really enjoyed the course, there was a reasonable amount to learn but it comes really easily after a while and you feel very calm and confident quite quickly even tho you may be up to 18m down. Saw a lot of fish as wel...

Hey guys, Been in New Zealand coming up a week now, flew into Auckland and only spent a day there (its just a fairly std city) before moving onto the bay of islands which I've now been staying in for 5 days and will be until sunday.Its nice to stay somewhere for enough time to really settle in there and I couldn't have asked for a much nicer or chilled out place to do so. Been busy as ever tho:I've Made a close group of 7 cool friends (Rich,Leanne,Kelly,Alex,El a...

The other day I set off with a couple of italians I met in the morning to go to Hakone an area south of Tokyo, the weather was really nice and although we spent literally all day on some form of transport (shinkansen - bullet trains, local trains, cable car, 5m on foot and a bus) we got some really nice views and had a good laugh. We met some locals on the train, took the cable car over a volcanic mountain, got clear views of mount fuji (which can only be done if...

Hi Again,Now that I have a little time, heres the details on my stay in Koya-San.After staying with Nori in Osaka I traveled south Koya-san, I took a long train ride to the last stop, a cable car up a mountain to get there but it was well worth it, my stay was definately one that I hope to remember for a while.Koya-san is a basin 1000m up in the mountains where a monk founded a new form of pure buddhism some centuries ago, it is now a small rural town but with so...