"Happy Birthday to me , Happy Birthday to me , Happy Birthday to me i am 23!!!"Another year older and the 19th December 2006 has been one to remember. Starting with an early rise and Eggs benedict followed by the opening of beautiful presents as you can see in my pics! I then left Jess for a day in the Bay of islands, boarding Kings cruises i had plans of swimming with dolphins, this has always been a dream and to view these magnificent mammals in their...

Sammy gets on her bike; or not!!!One sunny evening in idyllic Paihia we decided to take advantage of the free push bikes on offer at our hostel. I had planned of cycling to the next town in the bay but these were dashed when i learnt that Sam cant ride a bike. Of course she will be quite adament in her denial of this embarrasing misfortune but yes its true there is something Sam is not good at (two things if we count tennis!)Looking back i cannot picture her on a...

Since our last journal entry we've been exploring the north island in more depth and messing about along the way!! We absolutely loved Taupo, the hamlet by the lake home to our skydiving and left for Rotorua with fond memories of prestine blue skies and the mirrored lake. Our journey north to Rotorua was once again with camp Matthew who would never stop talking, I swear we are destined to have this man on every bus trip but hey, we're warming to him. Just...

We left Napier feeling like we'd seen pretty much all there was to see in the town. We took the intercity bus north through wine country to Lake Taupo. On the way we experience THE most informative, no let me get this right annoyingly informative bus driver in the south pacific!! At first I thought it was great finding out about local nature, exports and history. All took a turn for the worse when he started digressing about the amount of time he waits at par...

Woes of Wellington and "The Queen"Our brief encounter with Wellington was full of anger and dissapointment. To cut a very long dispute short our hostel that we'd booked wasn't far off a squat! No heating, very dingy and absolutely appauling management. Immediatly after we'd checked out our room we returned to reception to ask if the heating could be turned on (as my fingers and toes were turning a light shade of blue) to which the immature e...