Kia Ora! We've finally chucked in the hectic travelling schedule and been fairly sedentary over the last couple of weeks, spending 4 days in stinky Rotorua and a luxurious week in the apartment in Taupo. Still we've been trying to make up for it by eating lots of fab food - we're planning a barbeque/hot tub evening tonight, and taking in as many of the more adventurous activities on offer as we can afford/cram into the spells of good weather (or not - ...

Hello all Just a quick one here from Fiji. Made it to Mana Island and our first proper taste of backpacking life after vaning it though the states. Lots of youngsters around all mad for getting pissed - makes us feel a bit old to be honest but we join in as best we can until it gets passed our bedtime. Mana is cool. Sea is amazingly warm, snorkling from the island is great and the people are pretty laid back. Main reason for being here though is the div...

Phew, its finally hot here, and we're having a day off after a huge walk yesterday to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. This is a 17 mile walk normally, and in the summer they have cables on posts with steps to help you up the last few hundred nearly vertical feet to the top, 4,800ft above the valley floor. However, it not being 'summer' yet they just have the cables hanging down the cliff face. Its the kind of thing where you get there and think...

Canyons, canyons everywhere... They tell you not to do all the South Western National Parks in one go, and we began to see why as the canyon overload kicked in at about here. These are amazing landscapes, huge, picturesque, wild, and also fairly similar. Having said that they were all that bit different - bryce canyon with its intricate wind carved hoodoos, Canyonlands had, well huge canyons to the horizon, Capital Reef has rocks that stick up in th...

Its Yellowstone - hold on to your pikanik baskets Boo boo. Well we looked pretty hard, we even took an evening hike through the woodlands in neighbouring Grand Teton National park but we didn't see any bears at all, not even a measly little black bear. Still there's much much more to Yellowstone than old Yogi - geysers, waterfalls (more) canyons, frozen lakes, bubbling mudpots, bison/buffalo, elks, rain, cloud, beaver type things,and hot thermal springs. W...