Bula! We are currently in fiji! Had my birthday yesterday on the beautiful coral coast, we are staying at the place where celebrity love island was filmed. ed surprisd me it was very romantical. its beautiful, we have been lazing and doing nothing which is great, only moving to get our complimentary afternoon tea and scones at 4pm, bliss! we went on a jungle trek today with a fijian villager, we learnt so much about natural medicines and traditional food...allsorts. then we went swimming and filled up or water bottle at a lovely waterfall spot. we are on the mainland now but will head to the yasawa islands just left of fiji for a few days too, then its a trip to the cook islands then home! nearly all over - cant believe it!

will quickly get you up to speed on the rset of our time in New Zealand then will probably get the last blog when we are back on home turf! pretty ready though now so this is our holiday time! he he! ok last we were in oamaru, ogling at penguins, east of the south island....so here goes...

next stop was to lake tekapo we only stayed here for a night but the drive was pretty nice and we vegged out watching films all night by the cosy hostel fire. The next day we head back to christchurch. we were glad to be in familiar teritory as it holds good memories with it being eds birthday last time we were here! the atmosphere was cool as there was an arts festival going on (right up my street of course). We only stayed a night again as the next day we travelled back up to picton with a stop back in kaikoura which we both love, for lunch, then on the ferry over to the north island where we started in wellington.

wellington - ferry crossing was very nice, picturesque and good to see where we left one island behind and quickly found the other. We mainly did sight seeing here, visiting the main museum on NZ called Te Papa, was great to learn about the maori culture, which features more predominantly in the north island.

napier - this was a sleepy, art deco, seaside town. but we had the best drive here ever. the driver took us to see some kiwis in a sanctuary designed to breed them so we went from seeing their national icon, straight on to another the tui brewery, we all got a wee bit tiddly here as it was only 11 in the morning and there were only 8 of us on the bus so we got to know each other quite well. ed and i needed to wee so badly along the way we had to get the driver to stop, we couldnt move! theres more hilarity involved in the story but we will reveal all when back at home...then we went to a winery! in napier we had a good night out as we were in the spirit and went and watched a rugby game the next day which was great to chat to locals and get involved with the great crowd!

taupo - ok...me and ed had been talking ourselves in and out of doing a skydive for 4 months now so the day we got there we told our driver we were thinking of doing it and he booked us in anyway, so we had no choice and the weather was apparently really changeable and today was a good day! but...it was bloody fantastic, so glad we did it. what a rush! the only moment we got nervous was when we saw the doors open and looked down, you have a moment where you think 'what the hell am i doing' then the next minute your flying through the air at 200kmh.

rotorua - this place had a real magical charm about it, rooted in so much maori culture, and there was loads of geothermal activity going on that smoke would seep out of cracks in the pavement - on the drive here we went to a place called the craters of the moon where there were bubbling mud pools and stinky sulphur thermal pools. whilst we were here we went to a maori hangi and concert. they did the haka and the songs and performance was great. the hangi is where they cook your meal in an underground pit for hours, it was so tasty and plenty to go round! i (hayley) did the most random thing calld zorbing where you roll down a hill in a giant plastic ball, which looks like a hamster ball, in water, very mad, very disorientating, but very fun! the next thing we did was white water rafting, this was one of the most enjoyable days we've had the weather was great, although it did rain at one point making the rapids even more dramatic! the scenery was stunning the guides were really cool and we got fish n chips included at the end! the adrenaline rush from this was ace - we were scared to death but once through the rapids, without ending up overboard was a great feeling and you really felt part of a team! we also ended up with a hostel mum here who took care of us and drove us all round rotorua when we needed to go anywhere

we had a stop off at a place called mt maunganui for 1 night where we had a late night stroll along the beach, from here we took a smaller magic bus up to the coromandel. this place was really beautiful and the coastline was ever changing.hayley got to hold a baby lamb at one point. we also went to a hot water beach and nearly burnt our feet!!!

auckland- we had heard so many bad things about this city but we thought that we would like it all the same, because whenever we hear bad things about cities we tend to enjoy them. but the hostel was horrible cos we had a huge damp patch in our room so we changed rooms and all was good. we went on a free tour of the city which was cool as we got to get out of the city and see the smaller suburbs which was nice.

paihia- we spent three nights up in the bay of islands and had a really cool time although it rained alot. we took a trip to the most northern part of new zealand, cape reinga where the pacific ocean meets the tasman sea. we also went sandboarding here down some huge dunes, we were like kids running back up to the top, realising later how easy it is to go down but not so easy to go up. as some of you already know we had a bit of an ordeal with money and banks but it all got sorted in the end so no worries there.

we returned to auckland for one more night where we said our goodbyes as we'd been travelling with some people for almost a week. then prepared for our trip, trying to contain our excitement for fiji.

we spent one night in nadi, where we landed and had a great reception of bright coloured shirts and songs and guitars. its true what they say about fijians too they are so friendly we have been looked after so well and every body smiles! its so nice...

and here we are now so over and out! lots of love...

Ed and Hayley x x x