Life goes on in New Zealand! Our working life has become a little more absorbing as we both get stuck into working in the Salty Dog Inn. It's just what we needed, lots of hours, good pay and good fun. We even get the same days off! It gets a bit knackering though, with early mornings following late nights...but thoughts of white sands and clear waters in Thailand keep us going! Matt sweats away all day in his corner of the kitchen, impressing everyone by havi...

Hello all! No exciting news to report really, except that it's very nice to stay in one place for a while! Our working holiday visas came through super-quick once all sent off praise the Lord! So now we're all legal. We've done some work in a vineyard called Ransoms with an exceptionally talktative chap called Rob, we've de-flowered little fijoa trees to improve next year's crop (we have yet to find out what a fijoa fruit is like though!) and...

Ah 2007, we like it already... With the Christmas frolics all over, the weather warming up and still no jobs to occupy us, we couldn't resist Dave and Regans's offer to join them camping over New Year. We headed up north a bit to an area known as the Kauri Coast (apparently a kauri is a whopping great tree) and gleefully set about putting up our tent for the first time on the trip! Next to Dave and Regs' canvas mansion it looked a little dwarfed but ...

New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud...well that's true! It is definitely rather chillier here than Fiji! We made it safe and sound, no military bullets in our back, no realy problems at all...except..no camera. But we're trying to get over that! It was lovely to see family, meet our beautiful niece Africa (aged 6 months!) and get to know everyone again after the 2 year gap since we last saw them. In no time at all Cal had rolled up her sleeves...

Well Hello there our lovely readers, hope you're all well. We are now in sunny LA after a crazy ride on the Mexican subway (packed out at 5am!) followed by a rather bumpy flight from Mexico. We have been staying in Venice Beach at the Hostel California, in a huge 40 bed dorm where people have hung blankets up to make a sort of den for privacy, not unlike a refugee camp! Unfortunately the coughs and splutters of the fellow refugees mean that disease spreads fa...