Japan has really stolen the thunder regarding earthquakes but Christchurch is still in a terrible state.The busses are a complete mess as the CBD is completely closed and guarded by soldiers as there are about 130 building still waiting for the wrecking ball.We had booked a hostel in advance because as far as we could see there were only two or three operating.Most were in the exclusion zone and some were not operating as no backpackers were going there.We stay...

We touched down in Auckland on Saturday morning at about 630am.Those of you with an eager eye and half a clue about Geography will have of course noticed that we left at 2am on Friday morning and NZ and Tahiti are pretty close. We had crossed the International Date Line and as Rachel pointed out on Facebook we had missed the best day of the week. We met up in the airport with Nicko and Marry so we could all email home to tell everyone we were ok as well as che...