Me and Em have just arrived back at the hostel from THROWING OURSELVES OUT OF AN AEROPLANE. Yes thats right folks we sky dived- and it was freaking AMAZING. Nothing can beat the feeling of having nothing beneath your feet, back flipping, swooping , falling with not a care in the world. 45 seconds became a millenia. Geeeezzz I still can't believe we actually did it!!! It was one of those spontaneous things- we only decided we would an hour before!! I'm still buzzing!!! we did 1200 ft, and have ace t shirts to prove it. Ahhhhhhhh *big grin*. Off to make chilli con carne with the boys now. We decided to stay four days in Taupo so we can to the Tongariro crossing ( an 8 hour trek up a volcano) and will arrive on xmas eve in Wellington. I'm seriously over spending at the mo, even with only picking the activities I want to do the most! Still its totally worth it! Even if I have to sacrifice the whole food thing in the mean time! lol !

East As, Bro

It's been a while, I know, but we've been jetting all over the place- From Rotoura ( yes we did see huge amounts of champagne stylee water explosions) we hopped on a little bus and headed for east cape- first stop Gizzbourne. I don't think words can express how absolutely SWEET AS this trip was. There was only 12 of us and the driver so we had such a blast- getting up a 5 am to see the sunrises ( took two attempts as it was raining the first time) watching the sun set from a jacuzzi whilst sipping on some local wine! We did a wine tasting under the stars for 10 dollars that's about 4.80 for a lorra lorra wine! We climbed a mountain..and I fell back down it ( narrowly missing this large herd of cows standing menacingly at the bottom), we did some bone carving! I carved my own necklace! *proud* ..It's so remote that we really felt immersed in the Maori culture- we did a lot of visiting their places and learnt some of the lingo too ( kihi kihi - kiss kiss the actual name of a town). We did spend about 4 hours on a bus each day but we had tunes 'here comes the sun' being the main anthem and the scenery is just idyllic. We really didn't want to leave!!

On the plus side we are still travelling with lots of people we met on this trip. It really Bizarre our different backgrounds and age ranges ( me and Em are usually the youngest on most buses and it ranged to a eccentric woman of about 50 ish who we named 'no show' as she was late and proceeded to be over enthusiastic with absolutely everything - taking pictures every time we went round a corner and wanting to hunt possums but not actually kill them!) One of the people we made friends with at the beginning of the trip left us at Gizzy and since then we have carried around a doodle of him which holds his own seat on the bus. But more about the people later. Right now we have just stayed another night in Rotoura and are now headed east- to Taupo ..Today we have watched some one shave Angora Rabbits and I managed to hit Em squarely between the eyes with a cookie ( a budget cookie that is about as hard as a rock) - this was by accident but was very comical all the same!! Last night it was 'girls night out' at the bar next to the hostel and we successfully managed to persuade the guys to dress up as girls, which was needless to say hilarious , especially as the bar tender didn't realise that one of them wasn't originally a man!

With all this burning candles at both ends ( came in after 2.30 last night, got up to catch the bus at 7.15 ) it gets pretty knackering- we spend most of our bus journeys sleeping and eating carboard cookies. I cant believe its nearly Christmas! Crazy times but I loveeeee it!

Jaffas, Beaches and Long days on the road

We have arrived after several incredibly long journeys to the lovely (eggy) Rotorura. We took a air- con deficient bus down from Pahia to Auckland spent another night in a hostel there, leaving at 7.30am the next day to head up to Mission Bay- stopping at some gorgeous beaches ( complete with wild stingrays much to our surprise, although it was actually called Sting Ray Bay this some how hadn't registered!!) Every where here takes ages to get to as there are no motorways, just very very windy jungly forests and hills. Wonderfully rampant when your not feeling bus sick. Excruciating when you are. Speaking of excruciating by implanting half a bottle of aloe vera on to my face I'm finally back to more or less normal, thank goodness. Have bought straw hat to keep in the shade but unfortunately its a lot like Ems; meaning that when we are both wearing our hats blue fleeces and green brown trousers at the same time- not good! Anyway last night we (at my insistence) booked into the YHA 'cos I wanted to use my discount , none of the rest of the bus were staying there but it turned out to be a good thing as we had a room to our selves and a TV! we vegged and watched princess diarys. It was good to get some peace! Tonight (after visiting the geysers all day) we are off to watch the Mauri stomp about and stick their tongues out.. it is apparently rude to laugh which could be challenging.. Em seemed to find it strange when I said I will be trying to think *dead puppy* to try and keep a straight face- but it's either that or get nutted in the head by a Mauri, and they eat a lot. Ouch! We get some hangi to which should be awesome! nom nom!!

Random facts I forgot to mention : did you no the Aucklanders are called JAFFAS ( just another f****** Aucklander?) .. I did have another one but I've completely forgotten what it was! oh well!

So my face now looks like some one has embarrassed me, slapped me then covered me in tomato ketchup. It's called wind burn and its not good people. Not good at all!! We spent six hours on a boat yesterday which was amazing!! The dolphins were with inches of us but we didn't get to swim with them as they had babies.. sad face. Still we also saw a BLUE PENGUIN! Which is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen!! and we went snorkling. In the evening we ( me with large hat covering my face) found this little locals bar called franks which had the best live music. Karaoke was off, if I went up on stage people would be blinded by the shine coming off my face!!
Anyhoos going to check out now.. we are off back to Auckland then on to Mission Bay!

Pie- here!

We have now arrived in sunny Paihia, the bay of islands..which is something like the lagoon off Peter Pan. Seriously beautiful. For the first time we are actually in a proper hostel - in a room with 3 Dutch girls and 3 incredibly smelly French boys. Since arriving all our previous exploring energy seems to have vanished so we have been spending most of our time frying on the beach ( with Ems child sunblock for protection. Our bus driver actually laughed at me when I said I was using English sunblock!!) The kiwi express was actually quite quiet on the way up and the high light was definitely the Shirraffes- a cross between a sheep and a giraffe. It's so wrong but sooo right!! I am sooo excited about tomorrow- we are sailing a catamaran (?) out to all the islands, stopping to snorkel, watch and swim with dolphins!! in the eveing there is then a bit of karaoke on at the hostel the prize is a free sky dive so me and em are wapping out a bit of a tune!! fingers crossed!!

$1000 and 10 miles

Today was hot! (hurrah!) well enough for me to get funky burn lines from my bag with out me realising! This I don't understand as we spent a lot of the day underground (and underwater) in an aquarium /penguin thing! As I'm still struggling to stay awake with jet lag, I'll keep it brief - we got an AMAZING deal on the kiwi experience..ie a third of the price we would have had to pay in England, saving about $1140 which is pretty crazy then spent the rest of the day in said aquarium then meandering the backstreet's in Auckland's suburbs of mission bay, trying to find our way back to Chris and Sandy's (who we are staying with) House. Which we didn't have the address of. Handy. Still we got there 3 hours and 10 miles later! No wonder I'm so knackered!

Pancakes served with Lettice..

Before I left I had a conversation with my mum which went something like this
Me- 'Mum stop fussing! its not as if I'm going to the other side of the world!'
Mum' Er , yes you are'
Me- 'Oh'

But it doesn't feel like the other side of the world , more like some bizarre parallel universe ; We've already found Barrow and Mayfair and its raining, alot. However 'walls' ice cream has morphed into 'streets' and everyone is far more friendly.
So here we are and it only took us 24 hours , four flights, 5 films, of hours of sleep and an incident with a cup of coffee ( and a pudding and a chicken sandwich (oh dear Em)) to get here. Oh and several hours in customs. If I new there was that much difference between Cumbrian mud and kiwi Mud I might have actually bothered to clean my walking boots but as it is I had to spend ages queuing to have my bag searched as a 'Bio-hazard' . It's insane they had sniffer dogs searching out fruit in peoples bags- do Newzealanders get high of vitamin c or something??

Me and Em have the jet lag equivalent of a very bad hangover. We had to force our selves to stay a wake with a large pizza and beer ( its was tough that was :P) but we failed and were in bed by 9 pm ( that's 8 am English time). Unfortunately this meant we woke up at 6 am leaving us with a very lonnng wet day ahead of us! To quote Em 'If this place floods i'm going straight home ' . I think its stopped now and anyway we've just stuffed our selves with the most HUMUNGUS pancakes ice cream and syrup that was served with lettuce and tomato?? It is most definitely the other (crazy) side of the world.