Hey Everyone I know my Oz journal is out of date and my Fiji journal is non-existent - and I will update them sooner or later but I thought I'd better start a New Zealand journal so that my nearest and dearest have got a clue where I am at the moment. My spontaneous idea to swan-off to New Zealand while I wait for an Aussie visa is going great guns so far. Apparently I'll never be more than 145m from a beach the whole time I'm here - which is nice. I arrived in Aukland on the 28th and had a couple of days there. didn't really do much as I've picked up some sort of bug and I'm not feeling too crash-hot but I did trundle off for a walk around the city - which was nice enough - and bumped into two people I travelled a bit of Oz with and a lad I met in Fiji. As it turns out we're all doing the same places at around the same time so it'll be nice to see some familiar faces and not have to begin every conversation with "how long have you been travelling?", "where have you been so far?", "how long have you got left?", "that's a nice backpack"! Left Auckland after a couple of days and took a bus up to the Bay of Islands and Paihia. It's really pretty up here with plenty of chilled-out places to see. Me being me I've bypassed most of those activities and took-off upto Cape Reinga for a day of sand-boarding, digging for shellfish and eating fish and chips (or Fush and Cheps - as they say here). The sand-boarding was ace! We climbed an 85foot sand dune with a little body-board each, lay on the boards at the top and took-off. The bottom of the dune levelled out and then dropped again right into a near-by stream so we got to go flying through that too - good fun had by all! Not been here long enough to have anything particularly interesting to report - just wanted to let you all know where I was as my Oz mobile sim doesn't work at all out here and my English one is costing me a bomb! Will email everyone as soon as I get myself organised. xxxxxx PS - Michelle C - I've tried to e-mail you a couple of times and they keep bouncing back to me - will keep trying!x