Rotorua - Creatures from the deep

Our parents always said we'd get into hot water!

Rotorua - Hells Gate Thermal Reserve

Today we explored Hells Gate in Rotorua with lots of geothermal activity. We saw boiling hot pools bubbling and steaming, pools of mud boiling, a mud volcano and smelt lots of sulphur. The place was very well run like all of the tourist spots we have been to in New Zealand so far. It started with an hour and a half walk through a landscape that looked like it could have been a scene from a movie about Hell! We saw waterfalls which were a pleasant 38 degrees, and hot pools of mud bubbling at 100 degrees. There was also a pool called the steaming cliffs where the water was 122 degrees C at the surface and 145 degrees C just a metre below the surface. Some of these pools, despite the black water and awful smell, can be used to cook food and apparently do not taint it at all. The Cooking Pool would cook a pig in about 2 hours! After exploring we had a nice soak in the medicinal sulphur water spa and played in the medicinal mud!

Waiwera Hot Springs - Swimming in the rain

Woke up to some torrential rain, and began our drive South. The weather was so bad that we decided to go further South and get as much driving done today as we could so that we could enjoy the sunny days (!?) to come. Drove through Orewa where we stayed at the beginning of our NZ trip. We visited the Waiwera hot springs. There were about 7 different pools with different themes and all were warm enough to make it pleasant swimming in the rain, it was also a great way to unwind after a long drive through torrential rain. Being Winter and a school day the pools were deserted which meant we got the seven or so waterslides to ourselves. It was great not queuing and some of them were certainly not for the faint-hearted (Black Hole!). After that we took a look at the Movie Pool, where movies are shown indoors on a huge screen next to the hot pool. We checked out the 32 degree pool, the 36 degree pool and the 40 degree pool, only chickening out at the 48 degree pool which felt unbearably hot.

The pools are heated geothermally and so there is the faint sulphur smell around, this is a taster for our next destination which is meant to be very active in terms of hot geysers and springs. Still enjoying travelling in our mobile home, certainly not breaking the bank at £10 a night at some great campgrounds with lots of facilities: Tv's, Hot showers, large kitchens, BBQ areas, internet, gym, pools, DVD library.... Keeping an eye out for Lord of the Rings backdrops but none in the areas we have been to so far. We are staying tonight in a lovely beach-side campground but can't see anything with the heavy rain and low clouds, so no photographs today.

Cape Reinga - Beautiful day (Winter)

Cape Reinga - Where the Spirits go!

This is the lighthouse at Cape Reinga, at the tip of North New Zealand. The Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea just below resulting in some strange waves. The Maoris believe that peoples spirits head here after they die. You can just see the 3 Kings Islands in the background where the spirits travel to next before beginning their ascent...
A beautiful day and a great trip, particularly the sandboarding. We also visited one of the forests with the massive Kauri trees.

Sandboarding at Ninety-mile beach

Ninety Mile Beach - Unusual highway

We took a coach journey from Kerikeri where we are camped to Cape Reinga at the Northernmost tip of New Zealand. The first part of the journey involved travelling along the ninety-mile beach, which is actually an official highway! It was certainly strange to be racing along the beach with the tide coming in. We drove all the way to the Northernmost exit which is actually a quicksand channel where the car/coach has to keep moving otherwise they sink into the sand, apparently this has trapped many tourists. Our driver had no problems though. The channel actually passed through some giant sand dunes. The driver got everyone off the bus and produced some sandboards for everyone to try sandboarding. The climb to the top of the sand dunes was hard work but the thrill of coming down, very fast on the boards was worth it.

Orewa - Snowboarding

Orewa - Snowboarding

Got up early this morning and learned some things about the van, how to fill the water tanks and empty the dirty water, still avoiding using the toilet so we don't have to mess about with it, but can't think that will last much longer. Went indoor snowboarding for a couple of hours just to get us ready for the real mountains when we get there. Pretty good fun, lots of jumps and rails although the run was too short to pick up any real speed and before you knew it you were on the lift being dragged back up. Still great fun and much cheaper than it would have been in England. Photos didn't really come out to well, my hands were numb by that stage.

After a quick lunch in the carpark in our mobile home we zoomed up to KeriKeri, pretty close to the top of the North Island. We drove about 250km in about 3 hours. The views were glorious countryside, the roads were quiet, and the diesel was cheap. Tomorrow we have a daytrip booked on a coach to take us right to the Northern-most point. The campsite we are staying in at KeriKeri is great and even has internet access!

Orewa - Estaury sunset

Orewa - Waiting for the luggage

We booked another night at Orewa beach holiday park hoping that Lee's luggage would come through, although the complimentary overnight bag that Qantas gave him was pretty cool. Quantas T-shirt and boxershorts and some fancy toiletries. Fortunately early in the morning Qantas delivered the missing bag, so it wasn't even gone 24 hours, apparently it got lost in Sydney, the holiday is back on track!

Enjoyed a chilly night in the campervan, the van is very well equipped although we may need a thicker cover because it is Winter over here and it gets pretty cold at night when you switch the heater off. Have a microwave, grill and gas hobs, the van has a shower and toilet and a double bed, a sink, a fridge and plenty of storage space. Our pitch is right on the beach with a lovely view at night, a short walk from a pretty river estuary and a pretty town centre.

New Zealand - Camper Van time

Ok, the plan was straightforward, fly from Darwin to Syndey overnight and then connect to a flight to Auckland. We turned up at Darwin a couple of hours early actually about 6 and then discovered the airport was effectively closed until 90 mins before the flight, so we waited patiently. Next we flew which was pleasant, arrived in Sydney on time, but we still had a pretty tight connection. We are just out of the transfer lounge when Vicky says that our plane is on final call. So we run to a gate right over the other side of the airport, about 10mins of really sprinting only to find the plane has gone by the time we get there. Fortunately I check and find out it is the wrong plane, ours is right back at the part of the airport we have just left, oh yes and now it is final boarding! So, another sprint and we barely got on our flight in time. Not pleasant to sit down dripping with sweat at 7am in the morning. Ok so the flight went wrong but surely plain sailing from then on... Yes, you guessed Lee's luggage went missing with no idea when we would get it back. Laughing by now we headed over to the hire company and picked up our campervan beast. After getting used to it, after some embarrassing stalls in the middle of a busy road with the van just not starting until you took the key out and tried again, we actually began to enjoy it again. Stayed in Orewa just out side Auckland for our first night and enjoyed some home cooking for the first time in a couple of months.

Darwin - Au revoir Australia

Today we bid a fond farewell to Australia after a month here. Darwin has certainly warmed us up a little, with temperatures in the 30's and pretty humid too. It is certainly a pretty city and pretty perfect at this time of year. If this is Winter though, Summer must be pretty unbearable. The city is right by the sea with tropical palm trees lining the beaches. We visited Howard Springs on our last day and watched the turtles and huge Baramundi fish in the water. We have both thoroughly enjoyed Australia and it was certainly pleasant to meet up with some friends and family while over here. Next stop New Zealand and six weeks in a camper van!

Darwin - Crocodile Smile

Great visit to the crocodile farm where they keep thousands of crocodiles from the baby ones that they breed for those gucci handbags to the giant ones that have been rescued as they have started to become a nuisance to the locals. We were more than happy to stay behind the fences while we watched these monsters feed. The jaws have a biting force of two tonnes, the largest of any animal. We saw the freshwater crocs about 1-2m long, then we saw the salties! In the main pool (there were about 14 pools in all open to the public to view) they had ~120 saltwater crocs between 3-4m. In the separate enclosures they had some special personalities: Errol a 4.5m croc that kept eating any breeding partners they put in with him, snowy a 5m white croc, the largest in the world. There was also a 5.5m giant that was the star of the crocodile dundee movies. Although they looked pretty slow while sunning themselves it was very different when the food was thrown in. They can be extremely quick and agile and are truly awesome animals. Hearing about them was fascinating and the guide was extremely informative. Enjoyed some crocodile leg and crocodile burger to finish up.

Darwin - Crocodile Eating

Darwin - Crocodile Farm

Darwin - Litchfield National Park

Decided to drive around the national park ourselves rather than taking a guided tour, we had a great day with some fantastic sights. Funny to see "No Swimming" signs with pictures of crocadiles in some places while some other waterholes were safe to swim in having been checked once a week to make sure crocs hadn't sneaked in!

Litchfield Park - Giant Termite Mounds

We nearly missed these out in our haste to visit the waterfalls, but they were pretty impressive. Skyscrapers for ants! The "gravestones" in the picture are actually magnetic termite mounds, so called because they build them pretty much running along a North/South axis to regulate the heat. They are very thin but tall and pretty wide and look exactly like gravestones. Pretty creepy. The big red one is a different type but is still a termite mound and we saw hundreds of them.

Litchfield Park - Giant termite mound

Litchfield Park - Florence Falls

These falls looked truly spectacular and it was starting to get very warm so we went for a plunge, great to swim right under the waterfalls, although Lee did lose his wedding ring.

Litchfield Park - Florence Falls

Litchfield Park - Wangi Falls

Nothing like another waterfall to finish off a lovely hot day exploring the outback! Tomorrow we are off to the crocadile farm.

Darwin - Lake Bennett

Leaving the cool, green of Adelaide for the more tropical desert-like Top End. Darwin should be in the 30's even though it is Winter. In fact it seems to be very popular right now judging by how difficult it is to get a hotel room, probably because the heat and humidity is pretty much unbearable at any other time of the year. Staying at the Lake Bennett Wilderness resort for our first couple of days in Darwin about 90km South of Darwin and pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It is funny to drive on the Stuart Highway and see signs Alice Springs - 1500km away following just this one road, and Adelaide another 1000km further than that. Also driving it was the first time we saw limits higher than the UK with 140km/h on a single track road, further down the road there are no speed limits. Also see some giant trucks pulling up to three large trailers behind them called Road Trains, they can take some time to overtake even at 140km/h! We have a lovely cabin on the side of a lovely lake. We asked about crocadiles in the lake and we were told not to worry about it, only the occasional freshwater crocs near the sunken forest end of the lake, but you may see lots of snakes while you are walking around! Great!

Ate crocadile and emu for dinner, very tasty. Enjoyed a nice sunset on our balcony, we'll try out the spa on the balcony tomorrow! Attached a photo of the view from the balcony, you can just see the sunken forest in the corner.

Kangaroo Island - Vicky with the Koala

Kangaroo Island - Animal Sanctuary

After seeing plenty of koalas in the trees high above us on one of the walks, we wanted to get a little bit closer so we visited one of the animal sanctuaries on the island, "Paul's Place". Wow, we had an awesome time and it was only us and another couple there feeding all the animals for over an hour. Basically the farmer just kept giving us buckets of feed and leaving us with the animals. First off, we were feeding kangaroo's, lambs and an alpaca, who all kept trying to grab the bucket of feed off Lee rather than eating gently out of our hands. The alpaca also spat in Lee's face which the farmer was particularly happy with, telling us he had taught him to spit at "the pommes". Next stop were the emu's and deer. Vicky was too scared to feed the emu who were about the same height as us and pretty vicious in pecking the food out of your hand, especially when they ganged up! Next stop was the koala bear where we got a chance to get some photos while holding the bear. Finished up with some echinadas (hedgehog like creatures), a singing kookaburra, some parrots and the obligatory snake! We'll put a selection of photos up because we had a really great time getting so close to the animals, which were all named!

Kangaroo Island - Echinadas

We saw a couple of these as we were driving around Kangaroo Island, although when we got out of the car to take photos they were very quick to roll into a ball or run away. Not so shy with food in front of them though.

Kangaroo Island - Emu's

Lee looking pretty uncomfortable as the emu's attack! They weren't gentle trying to get the feed.

Kangaroo Island - Alpaca

Kangaroo Island - Vicky getting maternal?

Kangaroo Island - Stoke Bay

Driving around the island we visited the Flinders National Park and saw lots more seals at Admirals arch. We also saw the "Remarkable rocks" which are extremely unusual shapes, carved by the wind and the sea. Again they are so large you need to have someone in the photo to get an idea of scale. We visited Stoke Bay which was a lovely white sandy beach which you could only get to by walking through some small tunnels in the rocks from a different bay. Completely deserted!

Kangaroo Island - Remarkable Rocks

Remarkable, really!

Kangaroo Island - Roads

Vicky was driving, some of the roads seemed more suited to a 4x4 than our tiny Hyundai Getz! The name of the game was to avoid the wildlife and not shake yourself to death on some of the bumpy roads.

Kangaroo Island - Flying over for a couple of days

Kangaroo island just South of Adelaide is Australia's third largest island at 155km by 55km, much bigger than Jersey although there are only a couple of thousand inhabitants. The island took about 2.5hours to drive from one side to the other and we saw very little other traffic, driving for about an hour before seeing another car! There were three sealed roads and the rest were just rough roads. Except for some small settlements the island was pretty unspoilt with beautiful scenery and wildlife everywhere. It was nice to be somewhere really remote and quiet, although it would be busier during summer. The place really reminded us of England with beautiful green fields, also there seemed to be more than a couple of English who had moved there and started a business to escape England. We would live on this island if it wasn't so far from home, especially with the great value for money houses with lots of land! The photo shows the second biggest "town" of Penneshaw!

Adelaide - Barbecue time!

Invited to a barbecue with Michael, Vicky's cousin who she hasn't seen since 1991! Apparently not a very traditional barbecue with us eating roast beef most of the evening, although the paddling pool filled with beers on ice was certainly enough to make it a merry evening. Everyone was very friendly and we got some great info on where to go in Darwin and got to catch up with Michael and his son Cameron. Comparing notes on music with 14yr old Cameron we were pleased to find that we are not completely out of it yet! Ended up going home and playing pool and snooker until after 1pm.

Adelaide - Vicky's Uncle Keith

Had dinner with Vickys uncle Keith, to the sounds of Joe Longthorne, apparently very popular in her family! I had never heard of him, but he did look a lot like Donald Trump. Keith introduced us to the Aussie meat pie and some Tasmanian beer. He lives in a lovely village that looks about the most English place we have seen so far, nice and green.

Adelaide - Visiting Vickys relatives

An early flight into Adelaide, which although very close on the map is still a two and half hour flight. You also have to change clocks by half an hour! Welcomed to Adelaide with some typical British weather; fog. Spent the last couple of days meeting some of Vicky's relatives over here and going to some of the sights in Adelaide. It is certainly a very pretty, green place with some gorgeous beaches, although the weather has not been warm enough for the beach so far.

We are staying with Vicky's Aunty Jenny and Sid in a gorgeous house, I am very jealous of the pool table set up with plenty of room in the double garage. They kindly drove us around Adelaide today showing us the harbour and the Murray River as well as some of the gorgeous beaches. I'll put some pictures up as soon as we get to an internet cafe. Australia has not been as widely wired up as the USA and Canada so far. We also had a lovely dinner with Vicky's uncle Keith this evening. We're both looking forward to meeting Vicky's cousin Michael at the weekend.

Certainly taking it easy right now, pleased to see our first Koala bear at night, hopefully we'll get a picture of one in the day to upload. They look just like teddy bears.

Sydney - Last night

No pictures at the moment, but we'll publish some next time we hit an internet cafe. Had a lovely last night in Sydney with Steve and Nivi where we tried out one of the very authentic Chinese restaurants in Kingsford. Yes we massively over-ordered the food and left loads as usual. We followed the Chinese by a visit to the Krispy Kreme factory where it was rumoured there were free doughnuts and you could watch them making them. Unfortunately no free doughnuts and they had finished making them by the time we got there. So we bought a big box anyway, the perfect desert after the Chinese. Next stop Adelaide on an early flight.

Sydney - Kaiser Chiefs

Wow, just got back from a concert at the Holdern Pavilion in Sydney. First off, what a great location, an entertainment quarter filled with concert venues, sporting venue, cinemas, bowling, ice skating and shops, food and bars. The Kaiser Chiefs were awesome live, the lead singer was extremely active, jumping into the crowd, running around the whole hall while being chased by his own bouncers and in brilliant voice. No queuing for drinks either, loads of bars in complete contrast to most venues in the UK.

All the songs were great and you should see them live, but the best was the final encore with Vicky and I jumping up and down singing "Never been this far away from home!" to their song "Oh my god". We certainly got some looks.

Blue Mountains - Worlds steepest railway

After walking down the 800 or so steps to the bottom of the valley we fancied an easier way back up and thought about the small scenic railway. Well we saw the sign for the world's steepest railway and laughed, how steep could it be? Okay 52degrees, that is 1.27 up for every 1 across, we sat at the back so that as it was going to the top we were looking straight down. It was pretty scary. Now it is clear why the sign warned of holding onto infants because they could fall down. Even with the angled seats it felt as though we were going to fall off the back of the train at any moment with nothing in front of us, just the drop.

Blue Mountains - What a difference some sun makes!

Glorius day, still low temperatures but felt much warmer when the sun was on you. Spent the day travelling around the really well organised trails and bus routes. About 6 hours of walking in all. Awesome scenery, from the sandstone cliff faces to the enormous valleys, the waterfalls, the tropical rainforest and some beautiful viewpoints. The blue haze was less noticeable today and gave some really clear views of the valleys. The photo shows how much area is covered.

Enjoyed a lovely afternoon cream tea in a small tea shop with the largest collection of teapots in the world.

Blue Mountains - Cascades

Lee beside one of the many cascades and waterfalls that we passed on our walks. The scenery was spectacular with us taking far too many photographs to show everything.