Hi there from New Zealand!!

Sorry it's taken so long to update the blog but as usual we've been rushed off our feet travelling around all over the North Island. We arrived in New Zealand on 17th October after an interesting stopover in Los Angeles. Our airline in Chile gave us the option to go through LA and put us up in a nice hotel so we jumped at the chance. It was pretty cool to be in such a different city but it wasn't exactly what we expected....we headed downtown and we thought we were back in South America again as the majority of people were speaking Spanish and all the food places were Mexican! We got out of there fairly lively and got a bus to a huge shopping mall which turned out to be like a scene from a hollywood movie (appropriate seeing as we could see the hollywood sign in the distance!). At one of the stops a little hooligan threw a skateboard in the window and the whole thing smashed in...911 was dialed and everyone was shouting stuff in Spanish, blood flowing from a womens head...chaos! We hopped off the bus and into a taxi and made our way to the mall! Great day shopping but the taxi ride home was not so great, 45mins in the cab, and $93 lighter we arrived back at our hotel. Let's just say Ger didn't think that our trip to Abercrombie was worth it in the end!!

Anywho, moving swiftly on we arrived in Auckland after a great flight with Qantas. We spent one night there and then headed south to a place called Mount Monangui to visit a friend of Ger's from Athlone. Himself and his girlfriend treated us like royalty so we ended up staying 3 nights there, really nice. During our time there we went to Taupo and threw ourselves out of a plane from 15,000 feet, mental but we loved it and wished we could afford to do it again! Will try to put the pics of that up soon. Nobody will be seeing my DVD, mortifying! Ger looked fantastic jumping from the plane of course! The Bay of Islands was our next destination and the north of the north island. Really beautiful place where we took a boat trip and saw some dolphins as well as the lovely scenery.

Then we took a trip down to Auckland again to visit relations of mine (1st cousin once removed apparently!) This was really great and we were made feel very welcome by Colin and Rose. Our singing skills were even put to the test one night while we were there at a local karaoke place, great craic....hey jude!!

We hit the road again in our little blue Yaris and visited some amazing caves in Waitomo which was spectacular because it was pitch dark, only illuminated by green fluorescent glowworms stuck to the ceiling. We doubled-back on ourselves then and spent a couple of more nights with Shane and his girlfriend in 'The Mount' and ended up trying some more adventurous activities! Ger flew in a glider plane and even had a whole 30secs flying the plane himself (he's v proud of that!) The pilot took the smile off his face fairly quickly though when he turned the plane upside down! It was called aerobatics and the plane was doing all sorts of loops but Ger loved it. So that was all our adventures up north. We took the ferry to the south island 2 days ago and will spend about 3 weeks here.

Will fill you in as we go along hopefully. Hope everyone is well and it's not getting too cold there. To cheer you up it's not that hot here yet so the jumpers are still getting a wear or two.....not for long though!!

Love to all,

Linda and Ger xxx