What a week! We had such an awesome time in the Cook Islands and didn't want to leave, but here we are back in freezing cold New Zealand for a month! We met Lesley at Auckland airport last Saturday to fly to Rarotonga. The flight was 3 and a half hours and the landing somewhat questionable!! The plane was all over the shop when it was just about to land, then it was about to topple over (not exaggerating!) to the left, i thought the engine was going to hit th...

We got up early the next day for the drive to the far far north. It didn't take as long as we had expected it to, and we ended up getting there at about 1.00pm. The drive was fine, utnil we got to the last 20k's which was all gravel road! The lighthouse was pretty cool, and it is the area where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet so there was a lot of rough waves! We were a bit disappointed to see that someone had vandalised the signpost that tells you h...

So here we are again!! We left work on Friday (yay!!) and are slowly getting back into the backpacker way of life.. get up when we want, take an hour for breakfast, do a little sightseeing and then have a few beers in the evening chatting to new friends - that's the life!! We drove from Mount Maunganui on Saturday morning after breakfast with some friends. The weather was awful, and the drive was 6 hours in driving rain! But we got to Paihia at about 6.00 an...

Last weekend we decided to take a trip to Adam's familys bach (like a holiday home) which is at Lake Rotoara, just south of Taupo. It took about 3 hours to get there, so it was a good test for Reggie who had no problems - he's so much better than Mr Jingles!!! We got there late in the evening and had fish and chips for tea. The bach is so cool, it's right on the lake and has a fire and everything! The next morning we went out fishing on the little boat. I ca...

It's been a while, but i'll try to remember everything that we've done in the last month!! While Jacqui was still here, we drove up to Auckland to meet up with Ally, Jack's friend. He arrived at about 7am, so we drove through the night to pick him up at the airport. All feeling pretty tired, we headed north of Auckland to a place called Orewa, where we spent the whole morning in the hot pools there - very nice! The weather was awful, and didn't actually stop ...