Stopped on route to Hot Water Beach and cooked breakfast on a gorgeous beach at Kuatuno. Just love the beaches here; golden sandy stretches along the Pacific coast, mostly lined by grass verges, easy to park up and picnic and there are so many bays and coves that none seem crowded. Once at Hot Water Beach we did what had to be done and donning a spade we headed down to the beach prior to low tide to dig for hot springs. It is the only beach in New Zealand where...

Photo of said Bungee jump attached as promised!!!! Blog cont …….. Thursday evening we met up with Joe who is the son of our friends Anthony and Surinder. Joe has been over here since November and is staying just across the harbour. It was so brilliant to see him, we had dinner together followed by a few beers in an Irish bar and a little gig - not sure that it did much for Joe's street cred! Joe left us to catch the ferry back and we went back to the bar fo...

After an awful trip from Singapore to Melbourne with Qantas, old plane, old crew and even older food, had an hour delay in connection from Melbourne to Auckland but as it turned out arrived in Auckland only 20 minutes later than scheduled. (Now 13 hours time difference from UK!!). We got to the hotel late afternoon, pleasant surprise as it was on the Marina close to the city and has a real buzz to it. However Tom did have a little moan about our first room (for ...

Singapore…….WOW!!! 16 hours later after a 2 hour stop in Dubai we arrived in Singapore at 1.30pm local time (5.30 am UK), tired but excited. Since arriving we have heeded Matts advice (that's a turnaround) and managed to get out early to pack in as much sighting seeing as possible. We began with a city tour to get our bearings then did what everyone has to do when they visit Singapore; we had two large Singapore slings in the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel. Sin...

Leaving Having eventually packed and managed to keep our cases within an acceptable weight level, we said our goodbyes to May & Eugene setting off from home three times before we felt vaguely happy that we hadn't forgotten anything! That evening Jacqui gave us a great send-off along with Teresa, Stephen and family plus the boys who turned up as a complete surprise - brilliant! Friday we were seen off at Heathrow with an added surprise when Jen Jen appeared ...