After the peace and quiet of the Cook Islands, LA was definately the opposite we were looking for. We stayed in Hollywood just off the walk of fame. Whilst we were there we did Venice beach, Muscle beach and Santa Monica which are nice seaside towns and where they fimed Baywatch! We also did a tour that took in Hollywood Blvd, downtown LA, Rodeo Drive and some celebrity mansions in Bel Air and Beverley Hills which were amazing. We watched 'Oceans 13' at the Chine...

We got to the Cook Islands the day before we left after crossing the date line. Our first 4 nights were spent in the main town of Avarua. Whilst we were there we hired a moped to see some of the island which was only 32km around so it didn't take long. Our last 4 nights were spent at Muri Lagoon on the opposite side of the island. It was a really nice beach and had some great snorkelling - we even saw an Octopus! The weather wasn't great and if you coudn&...

We spent our first night in Fiji in Nadi ready for our transfer to the Yasawas Islands the next day. Our first stop was South Sea Island, only half an hour from the mainland. It was the smallest island we visited - we walked around it in 5 minutes! The food was quite nice there and the nightly entertainment was crab racing which was good fun. After a couple of days on South Sea Island we went on a sailing trip around the Mamanuca Islands and stood on the beach wh...

We had met a nice English couple a few days ago and decided to travel over the next couple of days in convoy to the glaciers. It turned out that I was good friends with her cousin...such a small world! We reached Fox glacier and did a short walk to the base. We then went our seperate ways as they were on a tighter schedule. The next day we drove to Franz Josef where we booked a guided full day glacier hike. We were prepared for the rain as it rains for 265 days ...

En route to Wanaka we came across Cardrona Adventure Park, which was in the middle of nowhere. What drew us in were the huge American monster trucks in the driveway. We decided to go out in an 8 wheeler argo which are built to go up, through and over anything which is exactly what we did. We've never held on so tight! Ross, the guy that drove us in the Argo is a monster truck stunt driver. He is currently building a 2500bhp (the same power as 6 Ferrari's) monste...