When I returned from my little holiday to the south island I only had 6 weeks left in Auckland, it was the run up to Christmas and I had a lot to squeeze in before I hit the road properly again! I was still working so would have to squeeze a lot into my weekends! So the last weekend in November I headed off to National park with Roisin, Fiona and her sister Laura who was over visiting from Ireland. Fiona drove us down, traffic was horrendous, taking 2 hours to g...

So I had planned on leaving New Zealand in November after the world cup ended but then decided I would stay on until Jan. When I was looking at leaving I booked myself onto the Milford track, One of New Zealand's great walks (there are 9, it is in fact the most popular) it is a 4 day/3 night hike From Te Anau to Milford Sound through some spectacular Mountain scenery. When I decided to stay I tried to change my booking - but apparently they aren't lying when the...

It's been a while since I updated this so I thought I'd let you all know how I'm doing and add a few more pics to share (read; make you jealous). So I got back from Tonga at the end of August feeling refreshed and looking forward to Curley's arrival and the start of the world cup. Curley(who I travelled to NZ with in 2005) arrived at the start of Sept and I'm fairly sure we just spent the first weekend chilling around Auckland and went out for a short walk in th...

I flew to ‘Eua via tongatapu again, the flight from Tongatapu to ‘Eua, was on a tiny 8 seater plane and is maybe the shortest flight I’ve ever been on – only 8 minutes!! It was cool to be on a little plane travelling the 40kms between the 2 islands – my ears didn’t even pop. I stayed at Deep blue lodge on ‘Eua – it’s the accommodation owned by the dive company there – the accommodation has actually just been finished and I was actually their ...

On my second day in Tonga I was on the move again off to the Ha’apai group, being a bit of a flash packer I had opted to fly between the islands (I do feel bad about my carbon footprint – I took nearly as many flights on my Tonga trip as I have taken on my entire trip so far (7 to get to NZ via Africa and south America – v’s 6 just getting to and around Tonga) but the ferry is infrequent and unreliable and I only had 12 days). When I was given my boarding...