Gaz and Saz Globetrotting

Relaxed and rejuvenated after our stopover in Samoa, we boarded the plane for the last bit of our trip - ten days driving up the coast of California, from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It was a long, boring overnight flight from Samoa - interrupted only by something I would rather have missed out on. I had been snoozing and woke up to feel something tickling my face. I thought it was the edge of the blanket - but no, it was something big and black and beetley - a big, black beetle - and it was crawling over my nose. Aaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhh! I tried to control myself since there were people fast asleep all around me (including Gareth) but it would probably go in my Top 5 nasty moments of this trip. Luckily Gareth got hold of it and squashed it. No more high-flying for that little critter...

Arriving in LA we easily got through immigration and customs and over to Avis to pick up our car - a Red Chevrolet Cobalt (yes, it went much better than the Nissan Sunny). Our next challenge was negotiating our way out of the city - quite stressful with the lack of sleep, being on the wrong side of the road and armed with such a hopeless map. We managed to get lost a few streets out of the Avis car park but got back on our way, heading for Santa Barbara, our first stop.

California dreaming

I believe that in foreign countries you should do as the locals do so we stopped along the way at 'Jack in the Box' for the biggest, greasiest cheeseburger I've ever had. It was disgusting but at the same time, absolutely delicious and just what we needed to keep us going until we reached our home for the night - the Sandpiper Lodge. We'd booked this motel in a panic over the dodgy internet connnection in Samoa - realising that without a place to stay when we arrived in LA immigration would probably deport us right away - and we weren't sure what to expect - but what a lush room - a bathroom with mini bottles of shampoo and shower gel, a massive TV and a bed the size of Croatia. Bliss.....

How's about that for a campervan and a half?

Next day we discovered that Santa Barbara was a beautiful little place and we didn't have enough time there to explore it properly. The Spanish-style buildings are stunning and the weather was great - the town seemed to be bathed in an orange glow.

High noon at the OK Corale

There were loads of great shops, streetside cafes and everyone walks around with their dogs (we've realised now that California is a state of dog lovers - they go EVERYWHERE with their owners).

While we were there we visited El Presidio, an old Spanish fort from the time when California was part of what is now Mexico. The fort crosses over several streets and is slowly being restored. We also visited the County Courthouse - still in use and decorated with a very Moorish style and great views over Santa Barbara and its surrounds.

Well, only when I'm burning

Still, we had to move on to San Simeon where we were due to stay the night. We were late leaving and it was further than we thought - along the way we got hungry - story of our lives! Gareth spotted a bright red neon sign for 'Margie's Diner' so we pulled in for some food. Well, like I already said, best to live like a local when you're abroad. It was exactly what you'd expect from an American roadside diner, benchseats in booths, old movie pictures on the wall and loads of food. Gareth ordered a strawberry milkshake which was served in a giant glass plus there was a metal can that held the rest of the milkshake (we were still drinking this from a takeaway cup in the car for the rest of the journey). I ordered a half salad (thank goodness) while Gareth went for the Philly Beef and Cheese sandwich. I think pictures are the best way to describe this 'sandwich'.

'Eat while you can' as we always say

Next morning we were up early to visit Hearst Castle, one of California's State Parks and the former residence of William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day - his day being the 1920s onwards. Hearst inherited the land from his parents and decided to build the mansion home of his dreams from scratch - filling it with treasures he had collected during his life - meaning that the place is like a museum with ancient tapestries, silver pieces, greek pillars and furniture - plus so much more. Pretty impressive. Hearst Castle is also famous for the stunning Neptune Pool in the grounds, ripped up and rebuilt three times during its construction because Hearst had decided it wasn't 'quite right'. There are zillions of photographs of this gorgeous black and white pool with bright blue water - and as our tour guide guide said - we were the lucky ones to get a rare photo of the pool without any water as they undertook repairs!

Lounging by the pool

From Hearst Castle, it was back on the road for the drive to Monterey, our next stop. We'd done a bit of driving on our trip, a lot of it in Australia and one thing you could usually rely on in Oz was that when you got out of your car, there would be a pretty spectacular beach waiting for you ... of course there would usually be something waiting to kill you too. At least we didn't have to worry about that on Californian beaches - right?

All we need now is a rattlesnake to join the party

We managed to dodge the beach hazards and reach Monterey Bay safely - our home for the next few days. I don't need to tell you that we arrived with no accommodation booked - in fact nothing planned at all - but once we'd found ourselves a motel for the next couple of nights we headed off to the pier to explore.

It didn't take too long before we'd booked ourselves into a whale-watching tour the next morning - something we'd thought about doing in New Zealand but had ditched in favour of the fantastic dolphin swimming. Not only was it much, much cheaper in California but I'd also just found out that I'd had a tax rebate - bargain - and now it was burning a hole in the pocket of my (well-worn) action trousers.

Of course this meant a dreaded early start for me but it had been days since the last one, (back in New Zealand I think). They warned us that it might be cold on the boat, so we wrapped up in all the clothes we had - and a good job too because it was colder than the Minus 5 bar in Auckland.

We're not smiling, it's just our faces are frozen

The boat chugg-chugged out of the harbour and on the way we were all hanging over the edge, eager to catch a glimpse of sea otters, seals and sealions (yes, they are different, I think the only thing they have in common is that they all attract SHARKS).

'They're waving!'

The plan was to spot some grey whales - they are among the biggest whales on the planet so we had a good chance, but as our over-excitable marine biologist guide pointed out distant smudges in the water I began to realise why whale-watching in New Zealand was so much more expensive - it is so much better. It was all pretty disappointing and then we had a treat - a lone killer whale close to the boat. Pretty cool and made it all worthwhile.

After our early start we were both ready for a lazy afternoon so we headed off to Pebble Beach. This is a posh gated community (we had to pay to get in) with some top notch golf courses, hideously expensive properties and exclusive shops. Hmmm, not ideal when you're on your last few pennies - but there were some great sea views along the way. Seeing as I had not driven since we collected the campervan in NZ, I thought Pebble Beach would be a suitable place to get back in the saddle so-to-speak and try my hand at driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the world. I must have driven about 200 yards before I pulled over and decided to leave driving until I got behind the wheels of my beloved Mini at home. The stress was bad enough for me but I felt sure that Gareth's brain would explode with tension if I carried on much further and it would be a shame to have to start divorce proceedings so close to going home.

The Lone Cypress - it's famous....apparently

Over to Mr Rees for the rest of our Californian odyssey...

The following morning we had decided that we had to go to Carmel, which is a small town just south of Pebble Beach. Carmel may be famous for many things in America, but in Britain it is famous only for being the town where Clint Eastwood was once Mayor.

Carmel is very posh, everything there looks just perfect, people walk their dogs around and then carry the smaller ones around the shops with them like they are young children. We had a look around a few of the shops, but it soon became clear that we weren't going to be buying anything here on our end of trip budget, so we headed to the beach for a walk.

Sunny Carmel-by-the-sea

After our morning in Carmel we needed to continue heading north towards Santa Cruz, but decided to do a detour to San Juan Bautista on the way. This wasn't as easy as it should have been, as we had a very limited tourist map that only really showed you where hotels were and the signposting was rather limited.

Ah, so this is the way to San Jose but do you know the way to San Juan Bautiste?

Eventually we managed to get there to find a small town that seemingly consisted of only antique (junk) shops and the Mission San Juan Bautista. Oh yes, and the San Andreas Fault.

Jess got there before us

The mission San Juan Bautista is built right on the edge of the San Andreas Fault, (the reason for California's earthquake issues!) and apparently they are overdue a another large earthquake. In the mission they actually have an old seismograph, which is great because you can keep an eye on it so that you know when you're going to die.

You have been warned!

Apparently the bell tower here was used in the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo, with James Stewart. Neither Sarah nor I have seen it, so it's another one to add to the list of films we need to see now that we are back.

We ventured out of the mission to go for a walk along El Camino Real, an old road which is now a footpath and cycle track, but it was a short walk, because this actually follows the fault line and we saw no reason to take unnecessary risks.

Earthquake Walk? How crazy can you get?

After the excitement of risking our lives at the mission we decided that we'd carry on up to Santa Cruz, which is apparently the surf city of northern California. Obviously we hadn't booked any accommodation in advance, so we had to find somewhere to stay. With our motel discount book in hand we headed to the cheapest places we could find. Our first stop was in the Riverside Avenue Travelodge, where the proprietor decided to ignore us for the first minute that we were stood in front of him, not a good start. We had a look at a room, which was fine, but decided to have a look elsewhere first. We told him that we would think about it and he assured us that there was nowhere else in Santa Cruz that we would find an available room cheaper, so we went next door and booked in there. Sarah took control of the negotiations, which went along the lines of,'next door is cheaper, but you seem much nicer and we'd like to stay with you, what can you do about the price?', after a few long silences Sarah had saved us $10 a night! I was very proud!

I have to say that I was a bit disappointed with Santa Cruz. I had expected a Californian version of the Gold Coast in Australia, but to be honest the seafront was more like a Californian version of Barry Island. It had a funfair on the boardwalk and lots of fast foodstalls and tacky shops. I was quite surprised because there seemed to be hardly any surf shops there and the shops they had reminded me of Fat Willy's Surf Shack in Newquay.

We had a walk along the boardwalk to the pier, where we had a healthy meal of fish and chips - after walking up and down the pier a few times we settled on the busiest looking restaurant that had a takeaway counter. They were pretty good too, but not up to the standards of Albany, Western Australia. As some of you may know, Sarah loves the seaside and there's nothing that she likes more than going rockpooling, so having read in the Lonely Planet guidebook that there were fantastic tidepools up the road we headed there for a look around. After fifteen minutes of searching the beach we discovered that there were no tidepools here at all, even though it was at the dead of low tide, perfect rockpooling time. Sarah was rather annoyed, so I took her to find something to eat to cheer her up.

Crufts-by-the-sea

It was in Santa Cruz that we discovered that you can get great coffee in the petrol stations at a fraction of the Starbucks prices and Sarah introduced me to Krispy Kreme donuts. It's no wonder they have problems with obesity in the states, those donuts are great!

We had a bit of a late start the next morning and headed into town to find some breakfast. The first place we found was called Zachary's and was absolutely chocka. They had a fifteen minute wait for a table, which must be a good sign, so we put our name down on the queue list. It was worth the wait, the breakfasts we had were fantastic, Sarah had some kind of corned beef hash and I had some massive mixture of eggs, bacon, fried potato hash and heaven knows what else. The service was great too, my coffee cup never went any lower than half full before being topped up. If you're ever in Santa Cruz and hungry, I would recommend it.

With our appetites for the day completely sorted we headed up the road to do a have a look around the shops. After we got bored of that we went back to the beach for a walk and to watch the 300 surfers in the water at Steamer Lane, one of California's premier surf spots. It was crazy out there, the waves were pretty pants and there were loads of surfers going for every wave, it didn't look like much fun, and the water looked very cold. (Particularly after Samoa.)

Gareth shows the locals how it's done (not)

Actually I lied earlier - there is of course something that Sarah loves more than the seaside and rockpooling - funfairs - so we hopped back in the car and went back to the boardwalk. It was a good job that we did too, because we arrived to find that it was closing in ten minutes. Luckily we had just enough time to get a ride on the Big Dipper rollercoaster. This is the same rollercoaster that was used in the film 'Lost Boys', it's pretty good, because it's old and you feel like you could fall out at any moment.

Viva Las Vegas

After another visit to the coffee and Krispy Kreme donut shop (aka petrol station) we retired for the evening.

Next day we had to get to San Francisco by 3pm to return the hire car, but first we had to stop in a music shop in Santa Cruz for me to buy a guitar. After much consideration I went for a Daphne Blue Fender acoustic guitar, which sounds lovely (when someone else is playing it) and looks pretty cool too.

On our way north we stopped at the legendary big wave surf break, Mavericks, at Half Moon Bay, but as usual it wasn't breaking. Not that I would have considered going for a surf there if it had been breaking, I'm not completely mad.

San Francisco was very easy to drive into and we were soon checked in at the Van Ness Motel for the next four nights (with some more wheeler dealing from Sarah). We had to return the hire car to Fisherman's Wharf, which is the real tourist centre in San Francisco and in order to get there we needed to drive down one of the really steep streets that they use in car chases in films like Bullitt - this would have been more exciting if we hadn't been doing an average of 2 mph because the car in front had somebody standing with their head out of the sunroof taking pictures!

Fisherman's Wharf was really rather tacky, just a mass of touristy junk shops and lots of restaurants. As well as a few 'performance artists', such as the guy who was crouching down on the pavement behind a tree branch, then jumped out at Sarah and gave her the fright of her life. Unsurprisingly we didn't give him any money.

There was this one time, at band camp.....

That night we hopped on the bus and went to the Italian neighbourhood, called North Beach, for dinner. We had a lovely meal and then went back to the motel, because we had to be up early next morning for shopping!!

The following day we headed to Union Square, with more shops than you can shake a stick at - Macy's, Saks, Bloomingdale's - you name it they've got it. It really is amazing how much cheaper clothes are in America, we were particularly fortunate as well, because we were getting $2 to the pound. After an exhausting day around the shops, Sarah and I walked back through Chinatown that evening (the largest Chinatown outside China) and had a lovely meal (with some Tsingtao beers), which again was huge, but we were able to take what was left back with us in boxes to have the next night, bargain!

Union Square

The next day we were going to Alcatraz first thing in the morning to try to avoid the crowds. The trip was great, the crossing was smooth and we were deposited on the quayside to start our tour of the island and the prison (penitentiary). They have an audio tour that you follow around the prison and it tells you the story as you go along, it's narrated by former inmates and guards from the prison and it's very good.

When you've been through the prison you come out on the other side of the island, where you get fantastic views of the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. It must look fantastic at night. You can also do the tour of Alcatraz at night, which must be very spooky.

There are many stories of inmates who tried to escape by swimming from Alcatraz, but none that are proven to be true. It seems very unlikely that anyone would survive the swim from the island, particularly as the area between Santa Cruz, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Farallon Islands is known as the 'Bloody Triangle', because it is the shark attack capital of California! After hearing this Sarah was very pleased that I hadn't been surfing in California.

It was definitely worth making the trip over to Alcatraz though.

I wouldn't fancy swimming it

After catching the ferry back we went to the Boudin sourdough bakery on Fisherman's Wharf, where they do a great meal which is a hollowed out loaf of bread filled with either chilli or clam chowder. Neither of us fancied the clam chowder and the chilli was great. The weather was quite cool, so the chilli warmed us up nicely.

Eating again

Somehow we managed to fit in an ice cream sundae at Ghirardelli's that afternoon as well, although I'm not sure how, because they were huge.

and again....

We had big plans to cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge the following day, but in the end we decided that it was too cold, too windy and we didn't have the energy (or warm enough clothes) - and with only one day of our trip left to go we were flagging. We ended up chilling out for the day with a look around the shops, a few coffees and some more food at Lori's Diner. Lori's Diner was on the first floor above some shops and as you went up the steps you thought it would be quite small, but it was actually huge. I had a Hot Dog with Chilli and Cheese and Sarah had a Cheeseburger, both washed down with Cherry Coke. Fab!

and again.

Lori's Diner

The day of our return home dawned and we were up early, we checked out of our motel and headed down to Fisherman's Wharf, so Sarah could pick up a few last souvenirs. She left me in a cafe trying to get breakfast, I ordered it and after 25 minutes there was still no sign of it, so I gave up and went to find Sarah. I ended up getting a platter of cheese and fruit from Starbucks, which was a bit disappointing, as I was hoping to have a big American breakfast on my last morning there, but it wasn't to be.

All along our trip, we'd often wondered what were the best things we'd brought with us. This tended to change depending on where we were but when you're living out of a rucksack you start to love the things that bring you a bit of comfort. For me, it was my trusty trainers (even though they smelt - really bad) and for Sarah, it was her stripey Smartwool socks. She thought they were fab - a six-month substitute for slippers and they could be worn for days and they didn't stink (well, that's what she said and I suppose they didn't stink as much as mine but my feet, socks and shoes are somewhat legendary in the stinky department.) I had even been persuaded to ditch my original socks and invest in some new wool ones like Sarah's.

We'd had brilliant time away, with the freedom to take nearly every day as it came and see so many new things, our worries were only ever along the lines of 'Where are we going to sleep tonight?', 'What will the in-flight movie be?' and 'Is this Nissan Sunny EVER going to make it over this hill?'.

It's hard to wave goodbye to all that freedom and go back to what you know, but we believe in watching out for omens and taking notice of them. As we waited in the motel to be picked up by the shuttle bus and begin the long journey back to Wales ... wondering whether it really was time to go home, we caught sight of an omen. I don't think there can be a better sign than this:

Signing off as Globetrotters, Gaz and Saz.
THE END

Please make sure that you've read the last installment of our blog from New Zealand before you read this, we published them both at the same time!

There aren't many places where you can take off in the early hours of the morning and arrive in time for breakfast the day before - and there wouldn't be many times when we could pop to Samoa for a long weekend - but from New Zealand we could, so we did!

Our place took off from Auckland at 1am on 23 March and after crossing the international date line and only three hours of flying we landed in Faleolo International Airport at 5.55am on the 22nd of March. We were greeted by a Samoan band playing some classic Samoan pop on an assortment of stringed instruments and then it was through the doors where we were met and given some rather tired looking leis before hopping aboard the minibus for the forty five minute ride to Sinalei Reef Resort, on the south of the island of Upolu.

Having spent the better part of our trip staying in rather basic accommodation we had decided to spoil ourselves for the four nights that we would be in Samoa and had booked into the best resort on the island (that's not saying much mind you, there aren't many resorts and most of them are just huts).

We came here for the glorious weather

After breakfast and a sleep to recover from our travelling we spent the afternoon exploring the resort and discovered that there was a surf camp next door (very basic) that provided a lift to the surf breaks in their boat, for a small fee (all the breaks are on the outer reefs, about a kilometre offshore). This was very good news because I hadn't expected to be able to surf in Samoa as we were there for such a short time, so I booked for the next morning.

It was shortly after this that we discovered that some pesky baggage handler had been a bit brutal with my board. The tail had taken quite a whack and had split open, but with the help of some surf wax and some sticky tape, just like Blue Peter, it was fixed.

The next morning we were up early for breakfast, then I was straight over to the surf camp. I went out in a boat with a local guide and six US Coastguards, whose boat was in Apia being repaired. They had come over to kill some time - they were all based in Hawaii and were very good surfers. I didn't know what to expect, and going by my luck on this trip I wasn't too hopeful, but as we pulled up to the break and dropped the anchor I could see that it was absolutely perfect. There was not a breath of wind, it was like glass, there were six foot lefthand waves peeling down the reef and there were only seven of us out there.

I've been waiting six months for this!

The perfect day

It also helped that the water was twenty eight degrees celsius and the sun was blazing, it was beautiful. It was without a doubt the best surf I've ever had in my life. There was one drawback though......

The tide was dropping and the water was getting shallower over the coral reef, after about two hours of non-stop fun I caught a lovely wave, but I stayed on it too long. I noticed that the water was getting shallower and shallower beneath me (one of the things with surfing tropical reefs is that you can see EVERYTHING that is under you as you surf along), then I got knocked off my board by the wave and landed head first on the reef. I was very lucky, because I managed to get away with just a bruised and very bloody nose. After a sit down in the boat until the bleeding stopped (to make sure the sharks didn't smell the blood) I got back out there for another two hours! I think when I got back, Sarah thought that I'd been beaten up!

War wounds

The following day was rugby day in the local village, so we decided we should go along and have a look. There were matches going on all day, but when we got there the Under 21 local village team, Laumoosoi, were playing. We weren't sure where we were supposed to go in to watch it and walked up and down the road outside a few times before another of the guests from Sinalei spotted us and came to fetch us. We were treated like honoured guests by the locals, given chairs to sit on, everybody else was sitting on the floor, and the announcer on the tannoy welcomed 'our visitors from overseas'! The rugby was not very good, they kept dropping the ball and some of the refereeing decisions were a bit suspect, but it was fun to watch.

Knees, squeeze, NOW!

They are certainly passionate about the game and the players really gave it their all. The biggest problem there was the heat, although we had had torrential rain for an hour before the match, by the time we had got there the sun had come out again and it was scorching. We were sitting there watching the game while quickly roasting! By the time we had got to half time of the second match we gave up, it was just too hot. We retired to the pool and happy hour in the bar alongside.

Sunday dawned sunny and hot again, so I decided that I had better get out onto the golf course before the roasting afternoon heat. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but by the seventh hole (of nine) I was absolutely cooked. It was hard going anyway, because the fairways looked like they hadn't been cut for about six weeks and the ball didn't run at all, but it was fun.

Our little piece of paradise - a garden fale

Next morning we were booked in for another little luxury - a massage each in Sinalei's spa. I had a normal relaxing massage while Sarah went for the hot stone massage. My massage was lovely, but Sarah seemed even more pleased with hers, she actually had two girls doing her massage. I could hardly speak or walk by the time we had finished, and Sarah was dribbling out of the side of her mouth, she was that relaxed.

We had been invited, along with our new friends Michael, Amanda, Brooke and Ben, for lunch that day at Edwin the barman's house in the village. He picked us up in his ageing people-carrier (with a massive crack right across the windscreen) and took us to meet his family. The house was pretty basic and seemed to consist of mostly empty large rooms and there were lots of children appearing from different places all the time. Edwin didn't actually eat with us, he just kept bringing all the food and drink out to us, saying that it was part of the culture that the host doesn't necessarily eat with his guests, but I wasn't convinced. The food was quite interesting, Taro root, which they eat as a staple instead of potato, with a coconut cream parcel to start, followed by rice soup with chicken and fish (oh and more taro). The main problem was that taro is so filling that having had it as a starter, no one really had any room for the main course.

Yes, we explained to Edwin that's not a friendly gesture!

We spent the rest of the day lounging by the pool, killing time and trying to avoid Neville*, someone that we met on our second day. I had stupidly asked about his diving trip that morning. What a mistake, we were then subjected to a twenty minute monologue where we couldn't get a word in edgeways. I made Sarah promise there and then that if I ever became that obsessed with diving and unable to talk about anything else, that she would put me out of her misery.

• not his real name

Sunset over the Pacific

So that was Samoa, a very nice long weekend. It would be nice to go again and have more time for surfing. Next stop California....

By the way, Sarah is still travelling with me, there just aren't any pictures of her in the blog!

After a short and thankfully uneventful flight from Auckland we arrived in Christchurch ready to start the next section of our trip, the South Island. Having spent the last three weeks being sensible and trying to book our accommodation we had fallen into our natural way of doing things, arriving somewhere and seeing where you can get in for that night. Anyway, it was only 11.30am when we arrived, so still very early. We called a few places, but there were no spaces, so we called the Jailhouse, there were spaces available, so we went directly to jail, did not pass 'Go' and did not collect 200 pounds, although by this stage of our trip our budget could have done with it.

If you see this man, do not approach him, he is extremely dangerous

The Jailhouse is not actually a jail anymore, it's a backpackers hostel and a very good one as well. We had a fairly small cell with bunk beds, but the shared bathrooms and kitchen were clean and it was very friendly. Unfortunately they only had a room available for one night, so we had to make a quick decision on our plans for the next couple of weeks, so that we would have somewhere to go.

A key factor in our decision-making was when we would be able to see some rugby. I felt that if I was going to spend five weeks in a country that loves rugby as much as we do in Wales then I had to get to a match. Luckily Christchurch is the home of the Canterbury Crusaders, one of the most successful Super 14 clubs of all time, and they had a match against the Bulls in a week and a half's time, decision made! We decided to head straight down to Queenstown the following day, so that we could do a circuit of South Island and be back in Christchurch for the match.

We had to be up early the next morning to catch the Atomic Shuttle down to Queenstown. We were picked up outside jail at 6.50am by a very friendly lady who said that she would drive the bus out of Christchurch then swap with another driver who would carry on to Queenstown.

Our new driver was a bloke called Jim, who was, to be frank, a right grumpy git. He was only the second unpleasant person we had met in a country where the people are so unbelievably friendly and helpful, and where you don't have to explain to everyone where Wales is! On the journey we passed Lake Tekapo, a beautiful lake with stunning blue water. It's this colour due to the sediment that was left in the lake by a glacier moving down the valley which gouged out the lake's basin. However it happened, it looks amazing.

Lake Tekapo

We continued to drive through some stunning scenery and it was pretty comfortable until we got to the last section of the trip, about an hour from Queenstown. Something happened to Grumpy Jim and he turned into Colin Macrae, he seemed to think he was doing the rally of New Zealand.

Queenstown is the adventure sports capital of New Zealand, some would say of the world, and when you go there you are supposed to do something exciting, but to be honest Sarah and I just wanted to relax. We thought it might be fun to go whitewater rafting, but unfortunately they have had so little rain there this summer that the Shotover river, which is the exciting one, didn't have enough water in it to go rafting. Our other option was to go rafting on the Kawarau river, but apparently this is about as exciting as going whitewater rafting on a canal, so we gave it a miss.

Gareth makes himself at home

We did however decide to take the gondola ride to the top of the hill above Queenstown, so we could admire the view and take a few photos. It's quite a good gondola ride, it seems very steep, but apparently it's only at an angle of 35 degrees, it certainly felt a lot steeper when you looked down!

The Remarkables. Remarkable.

We discovered that Queenstown's Irish bar, Pog Mahoney's, was showing re-runs of all the Six Nations matches and that they were doing pints of Guinness for $4.50 during the games (that's cheap for here), so we decided that we should watch the Italy vs Wales match there. It was actually pretty quiet in there, four Welshmen, a Welshwoman (that's Sarah, in case you were wondering) a few assorted Irish, Scots and English and two guys sitting in front of us who never declared their support, so we guessed they were probably Italian. Every now and then an American or Japanese tourist would come in through the door, hear the shouting and barracking, then run back out again looking scared. It wasn't a happy result, but it made for an enjoyable afternoon.

That's BATHROOM for everyone else

We were up early again on Monday morning for the bus ride to Franz Josef. We had a much friendlier driver this time, who took us up over the Crown Pass, the highest road in New Zealand. It was slow going, but the views were magnificent over Lake Wakatipa and Queenstown.

Our driver did a bit of a commentary as we went along, most of it was informative, but some of it was just amusing. For example:

'Up there on top of that mountain there is what we call Indian Snow, do you know why? It's because there's apache here, apache there......'

This one was clearly his favourite, during a commentary on the trees of the area:

'In New Zealand we have four types of Beech; the Mountain Beech, the Silver Beech, the Red Beech and the much rarer, Son of a Beech.'

It was a long journey, but eventually we arrived in Franz Josef, where it was raining. We had been very lucky with the weather in New Zealand so far, but it seemed to be turning against us. We checked into our hostel just in time to avoid the heavy rain that then continued all afternoon and all night.

We'd booked ourselves onto a three-quarter day hike up on the Franz Josef Glacier the following day, so we were up early again to get kitted out and head up there. Thankfully the rain had eased a little, so we didn't get too wet on our walk up to the start of the glacier. There was a huge cave at the bottom of the glacier with a river running out of it, every so often bit of the cave would collapse into the river. When I say 'bit' I really mean a massive chunk of ice, which would make an almighty noise, like thunder. It was very impressive. The huge amount of rainfall the previous afternoon had actually caused the cave to get much bigger and our guide explained that it would eventually collapse in on itself. There are bright yellow signs all around telling you how dangerous it is there, that you should only go onto the glacier with an experienced guide and that you should not go past certain points. Three weeks ago two men had decided to ignore the warning signs and walked right up inside the cave, which is a really stupid thing to do. Unfortunately for them, part of the cave collapsed and they were very badly hurt, apparently one guy's leg came clean off at the knee, nasty!

It should be self explanatory

We put our crampons onto our boots and started up the glacier. Each morning a group of workers from the guiding company come out and cut a staircase out of the glacier with pickaxes, then they put a rope handrail into the sides with ice screws, to hold on to where it's steep. Its a little bit weird walking on a glacier - usually I would avoid ice wherever possible, but here you just stamp your foot down hard with each step and hope that the crampon grips. Sarah has got a bit of a history on ice having broken her arm after falling over trying to thaw her car's windows some years back, and I think walking on the glacier probably rated as highly on her 'Top 3 things you would rather not do' in the same way as having a Burmese Python draped around my neck did for me.

That is a full grown man up there!

In most places using the crampons was fine, but there were a few parts that were a little scary. The steps would be almost non-existent at times and I did wonder how you would be able to stop yourself if you fell on a slope. Would you just slide all the way back down to the bottom of the glacier?! By far the most worrying parts of the glacier were the merlons. These are holes in the glacier where rain and melt water find their way down through a weak point in the ice. The merlons grow slowly over time and get deeper and deeper. As our guide put it, 'If you fall down there, that's it, we'll see you come out of the front of the glacier in six or seven years'!

Don't look down

As you travel further up the glacier you start to see blue ice. It's blue because the ice is under such high pressure that when it refracts light, certain colours in the spectrum stand out much more than others, particularly blue. It was quite cool to look at.

'There was an Englishman, a Welshman and .......'

We managed to survive the rest of the hike without falling down any merlons and without losing our lunch to any of the cheeky Keas, birds that are obviously well-used to the hikers and the lunches they bring with them. We were back to our hostel by about 3pm and promptly fell asleep!

The next day we woke to find that it had snowed in the mountains around us overnight, so much for the traveller's endless summer! We were booked on the Atomic Shuttle again, to Greymouth, but it wasn't leaving until 3pm, so we had a bit of time to waste. Not that easy when it's raining torrentially. After spending some time in a red bus that had been converted into an internet cafe, we had a cup of tea, then decided to go for a walk, seeing as the rain had stopped at last!

We headed up a little track near our hostel, which was signposted for Matutu tunnels. The sign said that it was a one hour and forty minute return journey and we only had an hour and a half before we had to get the bus, so we thought we'd just have a wander. It was definitely a good idea, because after walking for about ten minutes, we saw what looked like a deer standing on the track ahead watching us.

'Does my bum look big in this?

It stood there for a little while, then wandered around in front of us, it obviously didn't think we were a threat. Sarah managed to get a few good photos and we realised that it wasn't actually a deer, it was a chamois. Yes, that is the same thing that people use to wipe the water off their car, they actually live wild in the mountains in New Zealand. Many years ago an Austrian named Haast explored New Zealand, naming the Franz Josef Glacier after the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a reward for his work he was made 'von Haast' and awarded five Chamois, which he released in the foothills of Mt Cook and they have since thrived in the area. Sarah used to occassionally buy a chamois leather for her grandfather as a birthday or Christmas gift, but after seeing that they are so cute in the flesh (or fur), sorry Grampa, but I don't think that's going to happen again!

We arrived in Greymouth at about six o'clock and checked into the Global Village Hostel. This hostel comes highly recommended in the backpackers guides to New Zealand and for very good reason. Our room was really nice, with little tribal trinkets and things on the walls, a very comfy bed and it was lovely and warm. They had an excellent kitchen and there were free bikes and kayaks for the guests' use. Not that we bothered to use them of course.

Spot the deliberate mistake

We dropped our stuff off in the room and went for a walk along the floodwall down to the harbour entrance to have a look at the breakwater. It was pretty wild there, the hostel owner had told us that Greymouth is the most dangerous harbour in New Zealand and I can see why. The harbour entrance is where the fast flowing Grey River runs into the Tasman sea and when there is any kind of storm swell it must be pretty hairy trying to get in and out of the harbour entrance. There was quite a big swell running and some very big waves were crashing into the side of the breakwater, sensibly, all the fishing boats were safely moored in the harbour! I had read that the coast around Greymouth is unusual for surfers because you usually have to wait for the swell to drop to be able to go surfing!

The aptly named Grey River

Sadly, this is about as exciting as Greymouth gets and the following day we had a great deal of difficulty entertaining ourselves until we were due to go on our brewery tour in the evening. Greymouth is the home of Monteith's Brewery and they do a tour that is open to the public, which includes a tasting session at the end. Needless to say, Sarah was very keen on the second part of that sentence so we had booked ourselves onto it.

Shandy drinker

The tour was very good and the guide clearly knew her stuff. Monteith's is a small, batch brewery - they make about two million litres of beers every year. This might sound like a lot, but one of my customers in my last job made 64,000 litres every hour at full production. There are only ten staff there, so everybody does a bit of everything. The tasting was obviously the best bit, everybody was given a half pint glass and then given a quarter of a pint of each of their seven beers to try. Some of them were quite nice, particularly the Original Ale, the Pilsner and the Dark beer, but they had made one really strange beer. It was supposed to be similar to a German shandy, but rather than adding lemonade they had added a lemon and lime flavouring. It was probably the worst thing I've tried in a long time!

The reason why 90% of tourists are in Greymouth is because it is at one end of the TranzAlpine Railway, known for being one of the ten great railway journeys in the world. As we needed to get back to Christchurch, which is at the other end, we'd booked ourselves onto it too. It didn't get off to a great start, scheduled departure time was 1.45 pm, but at 1.46pm there was no sign of it. Sarah has dragged me onto enough different forms of public transport for me to be able to tell you that this is unusual outside of the UK. Thankfully a few minutes later it appeared and we prepared to board. Unfortunately when Greymouth station was built, nobody thought to check the length of the TranzAlpine train. Our seats were in carriage M, but carriage M was about twenty five yards beyond the end of the platform, so we all had to walk along the edge of the track and then climb up to the carriage (literally). The train itself is pretty good, there was plenty of leg room and an open viewing deck.

Arthur's Pass

We saw some great scenery (the train passes through the Southern Alps. Arthur's Pass and the Canterbury Plains) and got a few good photos, but to be honest it wasn't as amazing as I had expected it to be. Maybe I have particularly high expectations, but we saw views that were just as good when we were in Queenstown.

It was a very long train

On arrival in Christchurch we reported back to jail for another stretch, this time three nights, hopefully with a day release to go and watch some rugby!

Porridge

Saturday was very warm in Christchurch and a marked contrast to the West Coast, where it had rained nearly all the time. We wasted a bit of time walking around the city and I managed to get a much needed haircut in the smallest hairdressers that I have ever seen. My hair had been starting to get a bit out of control, and I had the beginnings of a mullet at the back, so it was nice to look a bit tidier again. I was particularly pleased that the weather was so good, because when we booked the rugby tickets we opted for the cheapest tickets we could (obviously) which were in an uncovered area. I really didn't want it to rain.

When we got to the Jade stadium to see the Canterbury Crusaders vs the Bulls, they were making a real show of it. There were cheerleaders, a giant sword in the middle of the pitch, a mock-up of a castle in the corner of the stadium and a team of men dressed as crusaders on horseback circling the pitch before the kick-off. All the razzmatazz couldn't take away from the fact that it was a pretty poor match - the Bulls seemed to be there in body, but not in spirit and never looked like threatening the Crusaders. There were lots of people there, but not much atmosphere, most people seemed more interested in the Mexican wave. Give me Stradey Park any day!

Wave your hands in the air like you just don't care!

Sunday dawned warm and sunny, but it didn't stay that way for very long, it soon changed to thunder and heavy rain. The thunder was deafening, it was just like being back in Sri Lanka! After about an hour it cleared, so we headed into town to see if we could find somewhere showing the rugby from the day before. We found 'The Holy Grail Bar', a sports bar near Cathedral Square and watched Wales beat England! Unfortunately the miserable git of a barman wouldn't put the match on the main screen because it wasn't live. They had the rugby league on instead so there was no sound for the Wales match, which made it lack a bit of atmosphere (I think he was English and just a little bitter that they had lost!). I still managed to enjoy it though!

That evening Sarah and I went to the cinema to see Hot Fuzz - it was hilarious. It was also completely stupid, but that didn't stop us enjoying it. It was quite a late showing, which meant that we didn't get much sleep that night, because we had to be up early and ready for the bus to Kaikoura at 6.50am!

The drive to Kaikoura was apparently like the second leg of the New Zealand rally, but I couldn't confirm that because I was asleep. Sarah wasn't too impressed though. We arrived safely in Kaikoura, a sleepy little town that seems to exist only so that people can do one of three things:

1) Swim with dolphins
2) Swim with seals
3) Go whale watching

Obviously we couldn't avoid all of these things, so we had signed up to go swimming with dolphins.

The reason that Kaikoura is such a great place to do all these things is because of the Kaikoura Canyon - a trench that drops 1200 metres deep. Cold and warm waters meet here and mix, causing the upwelling of deep-ocean nutrients that support marine life. Sarah had read this ranged from plankton and krill, to dolphins and whales. Sarah was thinking that somewhere in between there would be sharks too...

There were three start times for our trip, 5.30am, 9.30am and 2.30pm - so we'd obviously gone for the ridiculously early one. The girl who sold it to Sarah said that the advantage was that the early trip was at sunrise, which is beautiful on a clear day. Sadly, we can't show you any pictures of the sunrise because we were watching a safety video inside at the time!

We all hopped on the boat and before we knew it they had spotted a pod of dolphins - fantastic - they sounded the horn and everyone dived in. Nevermind the dolphins, could somebody help me with my breathing?! It was freezing and although a few dolphins came our way they didn't stick around long, so it was back in the boat to chase them down again.

'Nefoedd I'm cold!'

The second time was much better. There was a pod of around a hundred dolphins and they kept swimming past us and all around us, jumping out of the water right next to us - it was great. This lasted about ten minutes before they got bored and left us again, so we did another bit of chasing before a final swim with another pod of about a hundred. It was unbelievable - they were everywhere. Sarah started swimming around in circles (I think she had lost one flipper) and they seemed to really like this. One dolphin in particular was looking right into her eyes (look into her eyes, not around her eyes, but into her eyes.....3,2,1, you're back in the boat) and following her round and round.

Sarah: I can't tell you how amazing this was!

Big white finger-fish on the right of the picture

Much better when you move your finger

Lots more dolphin pics and videos above the water:

We celebrated that evening with a few drinks in the pub, then the following day took a walk over to the seal colony (a very long walk). You are supposed to be able to see hundreds but we saw ... one!

Billy no mates

After Kaikoura it was back to Christchurch and one last night in the Jailhouse before flying to Auckland and onto Samoa at some stupid hour of the morning. Bring on the sunshine...

March 1 marked St David's Day (with the Welsh Dragon proudly flying over Auckland Harbour Bridge as we crossed it) and also our departure from Auckland - this time not in the sad little Nissan Sunny but a Britz campervan. The campervan wasn't exactly sad but it was a bit basic and well worn - still, it would be our home for our last week together in North Island and we were all looking forward to it. We'd gone for a six-berth model to give us a bit of extra space and thank goodness we did, because even with the three of us travelling light there wasn't much room to move.

After a quick stop at the supermarket to fill the 'bijou' fridge and pack our belongings into the titchy overhead cupboards we took our positions for the drive up north. There were two seats in the front and then four seatbelts right at the back of the van. Mammy started off in the back - the best seat to see the wonderful scenery but the worst for comfort since everytime we went over a bump (and believe me, there are lots of bumps in the road in New Zealand, many of them dead possums ... I wonder if I will ever see a live possum here?), it sent a shockwave right up through the back of the van and into the person sitting in the back. Not comfy at all.

"Cabin crew - seats for take-off"

After all the racing around over the previous fortnight, we were all ready for a bit of a slow down so we'd decided to drive into Northland and spend some time around the Bay of Islands. Our first destination was Paihia (say 'Pie Here') and the Beachside Holiday Park - a bit of artistic licence used here since there was a beach, but one so small you wouldn't be able to spread a towel out to lie on - but the site did have a very cute and friendly family of ducks - who would follow you back from the shower block in the morning in the hope of being invited in for a bit of breakfast.

Mammy, can I bring some friends over for food?

While we were in the Bay of Islands, Gareth wanted to dive the Rainbow Warrior. This is the Greenpeace ship that was bombed by the French secret service in 1985 in Auckland Harbour. The Rainbow Warrior was preparing to set sail for Moruroa in the Pacific to protest against French nuclear testing when French agents blew it up, killing one man, Fernando Pereira. After the ship was refloated it was moved to the Cavalli Islands in the Bay of Islands to serve as a dive wreck and marine sanctuary.

While Gareth was off doing his dive Mammy and I decided to walk into Paihia town for a look around - so we asked at reception about the path that led away from the holiday park. 'Yep' they said ' the path will take about 45 minutes and it's easy, well-marked all the way into town - you can walk all the way around on the beach if you want to. Off we set...

It was quite a steep start, but nothing after the Tongariro Crossing, and we had beautiful views out over the bay. It all looked good, but twenty minutes later as we were trying to wade through rock pools and approaching a river that would stop us going any further we decided we must have missed the track - so we retraced our steps and went back around to the beach for a look around. Behind a shed on a path that really looked like it was taking you onto private land was an overgrown path - no wonder we'd missed it. New Zealanders really do have a very different idea of what the words 'well-marked' and 'easy' mean.

Still no sign of the track

Paihia was a busy little place, with plenty of shops and places to get a flat white. After lunch at a restaurant set right over the waterfront we settled down for a bit of sunbathing on the beach before meeting up with Gareth after his dive. He had dived twice - first at the Rainbow Warrior and then at a nearby reef. Being a bit 'trigger happy' with the underwater camera he'd used up all his film by the end of the first dive and had none left to snap the massive stingray and eagle ray he (says he) saw on the second dive. I think this will be a bit like the Maori Wrasse we saw in the Whitsundays - it gets bigger and bigger every time the story is told and no one can prove him wrong...

Next morning we packed up the camper again and set off to Matauri Bay, about an hour and half north of Paihia. This was where Gareth's dive boat had launched from the day before and the owner of the dive shop promised me this was a top spot for a bit of snorkelling.

We had a perfect spot - right on the white sand beach - and spent most of the next two days in the water. The bay around the corner was supposedly good for snorkelling but the current was so strong that even the fish were being whipped around by it - so we stuck to swimming - and in the absence of any surfable waves, Gareth tried to teach us to bodysurf. He failed.

Gareth teaches Sarah how to drown gracefully

'You said the water was warm!'

Up on the hill above Matauri Bay there is a memorial to the Rainbow Warrior, with the propellor from the boat and a stone map that shows you exactly where the ship now rests.

Matauri Bay was beautiful but our time in North Island together was running out and with only two nights left we had to think about making our way back to Auckland. We were still hoping for a bit of snorkelling as it had been so disappointing in Matauri Bay so we drove back down the coast to Goat Island. This is actually one of the Hauraki Gulf Islands and a marine sanctuary. It's so close to the mainland that you can swim over to it fairly easily.

We spent the day at the beach, which was very busy with busloads of children on school field trips or having kayaking lessons. We'd heard about the snapper at Goat Island - some more than sixty years old! Being a marine sanctuary, no one is allowed to fish there so I guess a lot of the fishes just die of old age (must be a bit chewy). There are so many there - when you stood on the rocks and looked over into the water you could see fishes of all colours swimming underneath you - silver, orange and bright blue. (I did have a leaflet with the proper names of these fishes but I seem to have misplaced it so colour descriptions will have to do, I don't know any marine biologists so I think I should get away with it). We got in for a snorkel but it was pretty choppy so we were being bashed against the rocks and the visibility was awful - it was more fun just to watch from above - and relax on the black sand beach of course!

There was nothing much else to amuse us around Goat Island - one of the fish and chips shops was closed and the other one was expecting a party of 60 children so it was only serving burgers and nothing fried (!) -so we headed to Waiwera for our last night before our flights out. By now we'd completely run out of food (but not vinegar!) so we stopped in a small town called Orewa before we settled into Waiwera Holiday Park. There was something we hadn't yet introduced Mammy to - meat pies. In Australia, the only thing I would say that comes close to being a national dish (apart from a BBQ) is the great Aussie pie. These pies are delicious - and they're not bad in NZ either - so we had a supper of pie and chips (with vinegar) - yum.

Next day when we woke up it was raining and grey - a sure sign that it was time to move on - so we drove back via Orewa - for another one of those lovely pies and three flat whites - then back to Auckland to get ready for the flight.

After three weeks in NZ Mammy's one bag had turned into two (with a little help from both of us, who'd managed to load her up with anything we didn't want to keep carrying around with us). After Mammy was checked-in we all went for one last flat white together - yes, they came to tin fity exactly! We waved her back through the doors towards home after a fab three weeks together ... then it was a few hours sleep for us before our flight to Christchurch, in the South island.

We arrived in the Tongariro National Park after a drive from Napier along the Thermal Explorer Highway, with only a short stop to stretch our legs at a 'scenic viewpoint'. These scenic viewpoints are not usually anything special, but this one was a nice surprise. What you couldn't see from the road was that the car park had a nice view of a lovely waterfall.

We upgraded the hire car

While we were there a British couple in a campervan pulled up and we got talking to them. When we mentioned that we were planning on walking the Tongariro Crossing the following day, they told us they'd started it, but had found it very hard going and had turned back. This was definitely not what we wanted the Mother Superior to hear, so Sarah and I bundled her back into the Rolls Canardley (because it rolls downhill, but can hardly get back up them) and got on our way to the Discovery Lodge. This was the place that we'd booked into for our two nights in Tongariro. We'd chosen them because they do a drop-off and collection service for walking the Tongariro Track. The room itself was a bit basic, and the kichen contained a tea towel that could have done with a good boil wash, but it would suffice, plus from the deck we had fantastic views of the sun going down on the three volcanoes, Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngaruhoe. Try saying that after a few drinks.

Next morning we were up at 5am to get ready for the walk, the bus was leaving at 5.45! It was interesting to see how all the different walkers were dressed and prepared for the track - some were dressed like ourselves with plenty of warm layers, long trousers and walking shoes, while others turned up in shorts, T-shirts and trainers, so we really weren't sure what to expect.

The Lonely Planet (and just about every other guidebook) says that the Tongariro Crossing - one-day walk from Mangetepopo Hut to Ketetahi Springs - is a fairly easy walk that can be attempted by most people. I would beg to differ. The first section of the walk from the car park to Mangetepopo Hut was pretty easy going. We actually started when it was still dark, but the track was very well formed with boardwalks in some sections. This led us to the last toilet for a (very) long time, so it gets used by almost everyone and to say it is a bit smelly would be an understatement. This was nothing for the Mother Superior though, who said that during her nursing career she'd smelt and seen a lot worse!

The next section was a real killer and I'm not surprised that the couple we met the day before turned back here - the track suddenly became very steep for the long haul up to South Crater. What had been a fairly wide, well made up track became more like a goat track that was so steep that in parts it was more like climbing than walking and you had to rely on using your hands to pull yourself up.

It was a long haul, but eventually we made it to the top of the section - and it was worth the effort because the landscape changed to something that I have never seen before. I can only describe it as being lunar - the South Crater was huge and the ground was a very hard baked earth. The sun had come out as we got to the rim of the crater and it really looked spectacular. We crossed South Crater and headed up the next section which was again hard going, this time not so much because of the steepness, but because of the amount of small volcanic scree that made up the path. It meant you slipped backwards a little bit every few steps which was very energy-sapping on your legs. Yet again the effort was worth it though as the ridge that you climbed up to gave a fantastic view over a landscape that could have been Mordor from Lord of the Rings - and as they filmed it around there, it probably was Mordor!

Behind those glasses, they're crying

We didn't have time to stand admiring the view because we had to keep going towards the highpoint of the track at Red Crater. This was another long slog, with a very long steep drop over one side, followed by an interesting descent down a long scree path that you could only really slide down. We all took a tumble a few times on the way down, but thankfully we managed to make it down unscathed.

All downhill from here

After a very quick lunch stop we continued on our way. It was pretty much all downhill from here and you would think that would be easy - but in fact it became just as hard going. The steps that were cut into the path in some places had a tendency to be the perfect size for somebody who is eight foot tall - in total there were 5kms of downhill steps and they really took their toll on your knees.

The sign was the only thing holding them up!

We eventually made it to the end at about 2.30pm, completely shattered but very pleased to have completed it. If any of us had been unable to finish the walk the only way off the mountain would have been on a big red helicopter!

We all slept very well that night and headed off to Lake Taupo the following day where we arranged to go on a Maori experience evening. We were picked up by bus to be taken to Wairakei Terraces - here they have recreated a Maori village and even recreated the terraced hot springs that existed a few kilometres away until they were destroyed to pipe the hot water out to a power station! On our way the bus driver gave us a bit of a spiel about how the evening would go, how we would be welcomed and so forth. Unfortunately he had a tendency to put the word 'there' (pronounced theer) into the sentence at random intervals. At first this was amusing and a little endearing, but unfortunately his spiel lasted about fifteen minutes and as he went along, the number of 'theers' in a sentence kept growing. By minute eight he was saying something like:

'When the chief theer welcomes you theer, to the village theer, he'll theer offer a gift theer and the person theer who is elected theer as your chief theer will accept the gift theer, without taking theer his theer eyes theer off the village chief theer'.

I'm not exaggerating, it was that bad and it made it almost impossible to work out what he was saying. If we had relied on his information alone we could have been killed by the village chief before we'd even sat down for dinner!

After a tour of the terraces and the Maori village (with a bit of history thrown in), there was a traditionally cooked Hangi meal, followed by Maori singing and dancing. As part of this, they decided to take a few volunteers out of the audience to teach them the Haka. Guess what, they chose Sarah! Well she made a good effort, and you can see it below (a bit fuzzy but Sarah is in the pink top on the right).

The next day we had more excitement planned for the Mother Superior - we were going jet-boating! The Mother Superior is not renowned for her love of boats, so it took a bit of guts to do the jet-boating - and we kept reassuring her that it would be OK - something along the lines of 'Don't worry, you won't have time to be sick'! Well we needn't have worried, because the Mother Superior thoroughly enjoyed - screaming 'I love it!' in our ears as our very entertaining driver whipped us up and down to Huka Falls. He had a special signal to let us know when he was going to spin the boat, however, he had a tendency to forget to signal sometimes and would signal afterwards, very amusing.

Scream if you wanna go faster

After the excitement of the jet-boat we made for Rotorua, the Hot Mineral Pool capital of New Zealand. Along the way there were a couple of quick stops - first at Aratiatia Rapids. These rapids are not very rapid these days apart from at 10, 12 and 2 o'clock everyday when they release the water from a dam above to show tourists what they looked like before the hydroelectric power station was built and they dried up. New Zealand uses a lot of hydroelectric power generation so there are these power stations everywhere. It was quite interesting to see a load of rocks on a dried up river bed turn into a raging torrent when they opened up the dam.

Next we also stopped at the Wairakei Thermal Village for lunch and a tour of their thermal pools. To say that they were disappointing would be an understatement, there was certainly an abundance of steam, but the boiling mud pools both seemed to have dried up and it was all a bit of a shambles. Time to move on.....

Steaming

Every motel that we looked at in Rotorua had it's own spa baths and hot pools, so we checked ourselves into the Boulevard Motel. On arrival we decided it was a bit grotty, so we gave their hot pools a miss and headed instead to the Polynesian Spa, in an attempt to soothe our muscles, still aching from the Tongariro Crossing. The Polynesian Spa is probably the best known spa in Rotorua and we made the mistake of arriving at the same time as several busloads of Japanese tourists. A very helpful lady on reception told us it tended to quieten down around 7.30pm, so we went for three flat whites (another tin fifty!) to wait a little while. It was worth waiting - it is very nice there, with one of the pools right on the edge of the lake - it was very relaxing.

Hiding in Government Gardens

The problem with Rotorua is that because it is a hive of hot pool activity there is a lot of sulphur in the air and it really stinks, so next day after lunch and a walk in the Government Gardens we decided to head to Waitomo. It was quite a drive and fast, comfortable journeys were not one of the Rolls' strong points.

Wishing Rock (Wishing we could find Rainbow Falls)

It was quite a pretty journey, with a few detours. Sarah was determined to find Rainbow Falls, which were on our roadmap, although the exact location was rather vague. After half an hour of searching around a lake and a dam we had to give up - we thought they'd be easy to find but all we found was yet another hydroelectric power station! All the way along the journey I kept thinking that the landscape reminded me of somewhere, but I couldn't work out what it was. There were lots of small green mounds in the fields, not quite hills, just mounds really. Then it occurred to me, we were driving through Teletubbyland. I'm not sure when I have seen Teletubbyland before, as I'm not an avid viewer of the show, but I must have seen it somewhere.

All the whole world loves a rainbow!

We made a stop in Otorohanga a little way before Waitomo, because we were all hungry and fancied fish and chips. We still had a gallon of vinegar to use up after all....

As it turned out, none of us actually had fish, because it didn't look very appealing, but the Mother Superior did have the weirdest hotdog ever. I think she was expecting a frankfurter type sausage in a roll, not a battered sausage on a stick!

Heart attack on a stick

As a special treat for my globetrotting mother-in-law I had secretly arranged some special accommodation for the night - a 1950s Fiat Train Carriage.

All aboard!

It had been turned into a motel, along with a Bristol Freighter Plane, but unfortunately there were no vacancies on the plane. The Mother Superior seemed quite pleased with my choice of accommodation although she did complain that she had been left in the second class carriage while Sarah and I were in First Class at the front of the carriage!

We were up early to get to Waitomo Glowworm Caves - it was a good job because they get up to 2000 visitors a day, whereas we had a small group of only ten people for our tour. We went into the Cathedral Cave first, which apparently has fantastic acoustics and has hosted concerts by Sting, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rod Stewart and the Vienna Boys Choir - up on the ceiling was the occasional glowworm. Then we got into a boat to go through the main caves, which are covered with glowworms - it looks like one of those images of the world taken from space where they show up all the lights from the cities - very impressive.

It was our first day since Raglan with rain and it belted down most of the way to Auckland. This was a bit of a pain because the roofrack straps we were using to carry my surfboard were letting water into the car at quite a rate. Sarah was getting wet in the backseat and was not amused!

On arrival in Auckland we checked into the apartment that Sarah had arranged, very nice it was too, the Oaks Apartments on Hobson Street, just a short walk from the Sky Tower, with air-conditioning, washing machine and dishwasher! That evening we consulted the Lonely Planet and went to the Cafe Midnight Express for dinner. It was a nice little Turkish restaurant and our meals were great but we made the mistake of ordering Turkish coffee after the meal, which spoiled my whole evening! I expected it to be strong, but in fact it was just plain awful, very thick with lots of coffee grounds in it, yuckkk!

It's not that funny!

It was in Auckland that we found a good use for the Mother Superior's gallon bottle of vinegar.....my shoes and socks. Some of you may recall from earlier blogs that Sarah has been complaining rather a lot about the smell emanating from my shoes and socks, well the Mother Superior had a remedy. Apparently putting newspaper soaked in vinegar into shoes kills the bacteria that cause the smell. While my shoes were being seen to, the Mother Superior decided to try pickling my socks too! Well, it seemed to work, because after pickling, then washing, there did seem to be a significant reduction in honkiness. Sarah was pleased.

It was a busy few days in Auckland - we had lunch at Orbit, the revolving restaurant in the Sky Tower, stopping along the way at the viewing deck, where we all had a go at standing on the glass floor panels that hang out over....well, nothing!

Nice shoes

The food in the Sky Tower was very nice - but it was weird because every few minutes somebody would go flying past the window in a downwards direction attached only to a couple of ropes - they have a strange bungee jump type thing from the Sky Tower and the jumping platform was just above the restaurant. We were all full from dinner, so we gave the bungee jump a miss.

Next day we caught the caught the courtesy bus to Kelly Tarltan's - it's difficult to miss because it has a giant shark on the roof! It was quite good fun there, they had a lot of penguins as well as some huge stingrays.

Happy Feet

For our last afternoon in Auckland we headed to Parnell to do a bit of shopping and flat white drinking. Parnell is a posh suburb of Auckland and we had high hopes, but to be honest there wasn't much there. The highlight, or actually lowlight was when we went into a specialist chocolate shop and cafe for a couple of hot chocolates and for the Mother Superior, a flat white. Here we met our first unpleasant New Zealander - the woman in the cafe really didn't want to serve us and seemed to think that she was doing us a favour! What made her stand out so much was the fact that everyone else you meet is so friendly and can't do enough for you, there's always one I suppose....

That evening Sarah and I told the Mother Superior that we would spend our last evening having dinner in a Belgian Bar - this was only half true, because we had something else planned. On the way there we stopped at the 'Minus 5 bar' - this bar is made completely of ice, even the glasses. You have to get dressed up to go in there, they give you a lovely warm Parka jacket with a hood, gloves and booties and then you go in for your drink. Sarah and the Mother Superior were very pleased to find that a cocktail was included in the admission price - so they sipped their drinks while sitting on an ice sofa covered with a deer fur blanket!

Can somebody turn the heating up?

After that we really did take the Mother Superior to 'The Occidental' - a very popular Belgian bar, famed for its mussels. Sarah and I both ordered the mussels, but we were a bit disappointed - they were big green lipped mussels and a bit chewy! We still managed to enjoy a few beers though, Sarah and the Mother Superior rekindled their love for Raspberry Beer, a Belgian speciality apparently. We didn't overdo it though - this was our last night in Auckland and next morning we would have to get up early and collect the campervan......

Well I won't bore you with the few days before Mammy's flight arrived in Auckland, except to say that my grand plans to continue improving my new diving skills were thwarted somewhat ...

Pool, check, white plastic deckchairs, check, potted plant, check, water ... ah

Anyway, we were there at the airport ready for her when she arrived very late on Valentine's day, with a poxy little sheet of A4 paper that said 'Kia Ora Mammy' (to help her identify us as it has been a little while since we last saw each other). There were a group of Finns there at the same time, also waiting for family, with an over-the-top, totally ostentatious sign decorated with flags and kiwis and sheep - and Gareth and I were truly jealous of it. The sign didn't help them when their family arrived though, because they still looked daft when they rugby tackled their family to the floor as they came through the arrival doors. Luckily they had all gone by the time Mammy came through the doors like a contestant from 'Stars in their Eyes' and she seemed quite happy with our more restrained, and very British, effort.

No sign of jetlag yet

We know Mammy loves shopping so first stop was the supermarket around the corner for a few supplies (always good after a 24 hour flight) then back to the airport hotel, where, after a quick catch up we put her to bed as soon as possible in the hope of fending off the jetlag.

Eggs Benedict, yum

Next morning over breakfast we ran through the plan for the next three weeks - a whistlestop tour around North Island taking in as much as possible and (hopefully) giving Mammy the trip of a lifetime. There were no arguments from Mammy - who was busy getting into her first flat white coffee - so it was agreed and off we set...

We'd hired a car for our first fortnight (a sad little Nissan Sunny whose best days were definitely behind it, and even those days weren't that great) and first stop was Raglan, on the West Coast, known for its world-class surfing at Manu Bay - and yes, you've guessed it, flat as a pancake when we arrived. (Incidentally, now that we've left Queensland, Dai has confirmed that the surf is back.) Raglan was pretty enough, with a row of shops along one main street but with no surf, and the arrival of rain the mext morning, we decided to move on to the town of New Plymouth, in the Taranaki region.

"Sarah, your mum will be fine travelling in here"

It was an epic drive - despite New Zealand being tiny compared with Australia, the scenic, winding roads here take a lot longer to navigate than the easy, straight roads we'd got so bored of in Queensland. Driving to New Plymouth took nearly all day - but when we arrived there was some surf!

Catch it while you can

I was more impressed by the sight of beautiful Mt Taranaki, the volcano that gives the region its name, visible from the car park above the surf beach.

Pretty spectacular

Now for some facts about the volcano - I can give you lots. First of all, at 2518m high, it is the most-climbed mountain in New Zealand and was the stand-in for Mt Fuji in Tom Cruise's film The Last Samurai. More interesting is the Maori legend that explains that Taranaki once stood with the other volcanoes in the Tongariro National Park area, until Taranaki and Tongariro himself had a bit of a bust-up over a girl volcano, Pihanga (isn't it always over a girl?) and Taranaki fled west, tearing up a wide scar across the country where the Whanganui River now flows. Now Taranaki hides his face behind a cloud of tears. Sad, isn't it?

Mt Taranaki is one of the wettest places in New Zealand and there is a saying:

If you can see Mt Taranaki it's going to rain and if you can't see Mt Taranaki it's already raining.

I could see that was true because by the time we came up from the beach the mountain had completely vanished from view. I guessed it had started raining over there...

While we were in New Plymouth, Mammy decided it was time for more flat whites. These are a really nice coffee that you can get here in New Zealand and in Oz. They're quite addictive and Mammy had got the bug. We went into a cafe and Mammy ordered one each for us, getting into a bit of bother with the New Zealand accent, which is a bit clipped and flat. The conversation went a bit like this:

Mammy: Three flat whites please
Waiter: Three flit whuyts. Thut'll be tin dollars fufty cints
Mammy: I'm sorry? How much?
Waiter: Tin fufty
Mammy: How much?

At this point Gareth stepped in to translate, ten dollars fifty cents please. Here started the running joke of the trip and we found many, many ways to use it.

What time do we have to check out tomorrow? Tin o'clock

How long until our washing is finished? Tin minutes

What are you doing in the water? I'm putting my tin toes in the Tasman Sea

...and so on.

From New Plymouth we headed south towards Wellington, where we'd run into a bit of a problem with our laid-back attitude to booking accommodation. That evening the Wellington Hurricanes were playing the Auckland Blues in the Super 14 rugby and the night before, New Zealand had whooped the Aussies' butts in the cricket, so there were no rooms in Wellington and we had to stay just outside in a place called Porirua. There was nothing much there except a fish and chip shop where we got our supper. Now the only thing I put on my chips is salt, but Mammy and Gareth love vinegar and in New Zealand they don't seem to understand that chips without vinegar is WRONG. Mammy obviously planned for us to eat chips a few more times over the holiday because at the next opportunity she bought a huge bottle of vinegar, possibly the biggest I've ever seen - certainly more than big enough for a three week trip where only two of you like vinegar.

Product shown actual size

Next day we made up for lost time in Wellington - first stop was the red cable car - running since 1902, which took us up to Kelburn. From here there were beautiful views over the city and also the Skyline restaurant, where we had lunch before wandering over to the Botanical Gardens. The gardens were a bit wild but they did have a few weird and wonderful things to look at, including a sundial where you used your body to tell the time (it worked!).

Sarah's true vocation was as an Army Physical Training Instructor

Later on we found a few exhibits that were supposedly something to do with light and sound but we never really worked them out.

Gareth would never make the mistake of trying to take an unpeeled banana off an elephant again...

After getting the cable car back down to the city, we wandered across the waterfront to Te Papa, the national museum. I'd heard rave reviews about this place and they weren't wrong. For starters, it was free! By the time we arrived, it was about 4pm and with the museum spread across five floors we were never going to see everything - but in two hours we managed to visit the museum's own Marae (Maori meeting place), find out a bit about Maori culture, see some of New Zealand's wildlife, get coffee and cake, experience an earthquake and learn about volcanoes and do a virtual bungee jump! Phew!

Mammy had completely forgotten the universal diving sign for shark

After dinner that evening in an Italian restaurant, where Gareth met someone he knew through work in Cardiff (he had come travelling himself but reached New Zealand and never left - small world!) we had another important place to visit - Wellington's Welsh pub, owned by my Auntie Margaret's cousin Michael. The Welsh Dragon is apparently the only Welsh pub in the Southern Hemisphere - it was weird, walking into a pub decorated with Welsh flags and photos, listening to Welsh music, and being served by a barman from Abergele.

Iechyd Da!

Despite Michael not being there, we had a good time, which got even better when a skinny South American in flip flops walked in and started playing Lionel Richie on the battered old piano. As you can imagine, being Lionel Richie's Number One fan, I was in my element. So was Gareth, and it took a few hours, several beers and a Black Russian (this is a drink, not a person) before we managed to get him back to the hotel.

Next morning, to clear the cobwebs and Gareth's hangover we drove to the top of Mount Victoria for fantastic views of Wellington harbour, the city, and its surrounds, followed by a quick stop at Wellington Cathedral before we headed to Napier, another epic drive away, on the East coast.

Mammy was made to stay behind after class

Napier is known for its Art Deco architecture, the result of rebuilding following the 1931 earthquake that virtually destroyed the city. Well, they call it a city, I think that Llanelli could easily claim city status if it was here in NZ. We'd booked into a motel right on the front and it was early to bed because next morning we had big plans, starting at about 5am when our alarm went off and I called Andrew at Early Morning Balloons to confirm that our hot-air balloon trip was still on - and it was!

The website said that with Early Morning Balloons we would be up in the air in time to see the sunrise - at 6am we were still faffing about in the car park trying to decide where to go and by 7am we had finally found somewhere to 'launch' from - if that's what they say. Getting the balloon ready to go took ages although it was quite cool to watch - and the sun was well risen by the time were ready to go. Thankfully they don't use a foot pump for the balloon, as it was absolutely huge and took about twenty minutes to inflate with an industrial size fan. There were six passengers plus Andrew and it was a bit of a squeeze in the basket. One of the other passengers was an ex-pat, originally from Chester, who was quite possibly the most boring man ever, with lots of little anecdotes to tell (many about tinned fruit), none of which were even remotely connected to the conversation going on. Fortunately for him (and us) he was wedged up the other end of the basket as otherwise I fear that Gareth might have thrown him over the side before the end of the trip.

The balloon ride lasted about an hour and with hardly any wind at all, the main issue wasn't keeping it up in the air but making sure we went far enough to avoid all the orchards in Hawkes Bay. It was a very smooth landing, with no bumps, then we were served a 'Ballooning Breakfast' which was lovely although somewhere along the line I foolishly agreed to drive so I had to do without most of my glass of fizz!

Gareth now realised why Sarah and Cheryl had been so quiet

Back in Napier that afternoon we relaxed a bit with a few more flat whites and a wander around the shops and the beach.

Undercover flat white drinker

Best to take it easy with what we had planned for the next week ...

Hello everybody - sorry for being so slow to update the blog recently - normal service has now resumed. This blog is a bit of a combined monster effort, me first then Gareth. There is a lot to tell so get a cup of tea and a ginger biscuit and enjoy...

Off we all set to Caloundra, with Dai's car loaded up with stuff and a trailer behind us carrying surfboards, a fake Christmas tree, the laundry basket and an ironing board. After only a short while in the country, the new Australian residents and the two cling-on backpackers had managed to accummulate quite a lot of new stuff. Once we'd unpacked all our stuff we decided to celebrate by ordering a takeaway from the Chinese down the road - so Gareth and Dai set off and came back with a massive box of food - our hopes were high - but dashed when we tucked into the food, which was awful. I don't know whether it was the stress of the move, but we persuaded Dai to phone the takeaway to complain and then Di and I marched back down the street with the box, still full of food, to demand a refund. They gave us back about half the money after a lengthy discussion during which Di and I tried and failed to explain to the owners of the takeaway exactly why we didn't like their lemon chicken and chilli beef - so at least we went to bed with our wallets a bit fuller even if our bellies were still rumbling.

Next day we decided to split up for a bit of fun. Dai and Gareth headed off for nine holes of golf and Di and I booked a trek at a local horse-riding centre. As usual, there is a bit of a story behind this. At Christmas time, Dai and Gareth bought me and Di a lovely Christmas present each - a manicure and pedicure at a beauty salon in Tweed Heads called Splash (remember this name if you ever plan to visit Queensland). This was perfect, especially for me, who after a few months travelling, had forgotten how to put nail polish on. We were booked in for the day before we flew to Sydney for New Year's Eve - so we would be all poshed up in time for our big night out on the harbour. Sadly, things did not go to plan - my manicurist was a bit over-eager with the cuticle clippers and ended up drawing blood (and as I remember it, nearly severing my little finger from the rest of my hand) and it was Di's manicurist's first day at the salon - she had less beauty school experience than me - and Di had to ask her to take all the polish she'd done off and start again. Basically it was a terrible experience which has led Di to sign up to a beauty therapy course in Australia with plans to open her own beauty salon, since there is clearly a gaping hole in the market for beauty salons that actually know what they're doing.

Anyway, the other upshot of what should have been a lovely treat was that Dai managed to persuade the owner of Splash to refund a big chunk of the cost - mine and Di's Christmas money - and we were going to spend it all over again on our horse-riding trip. So we set off to the stables - ready for the hack which was due to set off at 2pm. Sadly, at 2pm the only life in the stables was me, Di, another couple booked in for the same trip and a selection of horses wandering around the yard, plus a dalmation dog that was hiding inside the little office building. Eventually, the stable owner turned up and over the course of the next hour, we got ourselves a riding hat and a horse each - mine was Cherokee and Di's was Dagfoot. What they didn't tell us was that Cherokee and Dagfoot were arch enemies - who we ended up having to keep apart for the whole ride. At one point during the trek, Cherokee, who had up until that point refused to think about trotting, decided to go for it and broke into a canter. I have so little riding experience I still can't work out how I managed to get him back under control - by rights I should still be clutching the reins and whizzing through the Australian bush on his back. At the end of the trek we got off our horses as soon as we could (good job too - Cherokee reared up on his hind legs moments after I got off) and ran off for the car, leaving behind a scene of total chaos, with horses, shetland ponies, a couple of donkeys and that scared little dalmation wandering around aimlessly. I think this is a clear sign that it's time for me and Di to take up caddying....and give up with the Christmas money.

Gareth continues....

While the girls went riding Dai and I met up with a friend of his from Carmarthen, Levi, for a round of golf. It was a fairly leisurely round on the nine hole par three course, with the only excitment coming from nearly hitting the group in front of us, who were the slowest golfers in the world. In the time it took the three of them to play one hole we were able to play one hole, walk to the bar to get a beer each and tee off on the next hole!!

We made a decision early on that any balls that went into the rough would not be searched for, as nobody wanted to risk a meeting with a snake, that would really have wrecked the scorecard!

We returned to the apartment to find that the girls weren't back yet from riding and it was a while before they arrived. They had apparently had a very poor trip and had not enjoyed themselves at all. (A week later we saw the owner of the stables in Coles supermarket and she looked like a fifty year old Vicky Pollard from Little Britain.) Anyway, Di and Sarah were left very unimpressed.

The next day we waved Dai off to work and then went off to pick up a (bright yellow) hire car so that we could get around for the week. We headed off to Maleny in the mountains above Caloundra (mountains is an exaggeration, hills would be more accurate), which is a nice little place where Dai and Di were considering moving to. It is quite nice there, but seems to have become a bit expensive recently, and it's full of hippies and new age shops.

On Tuesday we decided that we would head north a little to see what was inland from there, so first stop was a ginger factory. Unfortunately the gingerbread men we had there were the worst we had ever tasted, but fortunately there was a fudge shop on site, which more than made up for it. We then crossed the road to the Macadamia nut factory, with it's free factory viewing area, it was all so promising. Sadly, yet again we were disappointed, the factory only runs for about two months a year when the nuts are harvested and February is not one of those months! We did however see a man covering his nuts in chocolate.....

From there we went to Eumundi, where they have a weekly market. Thankfully for once we had arrived on the right day and the market was busy.....but mostly with people selling assorted useless tat....I think it was Diane who suggested that the world would be a better place if these people just got a proper job! By this (1pm) time we were getting hungry so we headed into the main street to a cafe. As we walked in through the door the owner told us that they were now closed!?! We were a little confused as everywhere else in the world one o'clock would be considered lunchtime, obviously not in Eumundi!

Next stop was Noosa, where the beautiful (ie. rich) people hang out, we decided to have a walk around to Tea Tree Bay and on the way spotted a koala. We had a bit of a paddle and then headed back through the forest where I turned into the 'The Koala Hunter' and spotted loads more. I can smell them out - they all smell of poo.

Not much going on around here

On the Friday we decided to head over to Pelican Waters, the massive new residential area in Caloundra to have a look at a few showhomes to give Di some ideas. There were some great houses, the first one we looked at was really plush, I asked how much it was and was told that it was $900,000. Not bad, I thought, for such a nice house, approximately 360,000 pounds for a 4 bedroom house with a jetty onto the canals for your boat and a pool. Then she said that the price was only for the build of the house and that the land it was built on was an extra $1 million!!

Dai and Di's new place was really plush

We had a look around a few others, which thankfully seemed to reduce in price as we went along, then the following day we took Dai back to have a look, before heading up to Bli Bli for a spot of wakeboarding.

This was wakeboarding with a difference though......there was no boat! What they have there is a lake with a set of cables attached to pylons all the way around and you do circuits of the lake. Easy you would think, but alas not so. Unlike with a boat, there is no smooth acceleration to lift you out of the water, instead you sit on the edge until the pulley comes around and then you brace yourself as it whips you away from the side. Dai managed to get up and going first time, but it took me quite a while to get it. What was most frustrating was that every time you fell off you had to go to the back of a twenty minute queue to have another go, which was a bit of a pain when you had only gone five yards. After a while I cracked it though and got a few laps in before the end of the day.

Knees bent, arms stretched, RA-RA-RA!

The girls were so impressed that they decided they would like to have a go too, so a couple of days later we all headed back there to have another go. Thankfully the queue was almost non-existent this time so we were able to get straight into it. Sarah nearly managed to stand at her first attempt, but looked so surprised by it that she fell off! After a few attempts Di managed to make it all the way down the lake before falling off, which was very good, unfortunately this meant crawling through all the weeds to get out of the water, then a long walk back!!

After all the exertions of wakeboarding, Sarah and I decided that we would spend the next day relaxing by the pool. Or so I thought, in reality Sarah wanted to learn to dive into a pool properly. Since we went scuba diving in Thailand, Sarah has become a bit of a waterbaby and you can't get her out of it. The first few attempts were rather belly floppish, but after a while she got it sussed, below are before and after clips of Sarah's perfectly honed olympic technique!

Before....

...after

We hadn't really planned to go to Australia Zoo, but we found that we had time on our hands and thought we'd have a look. We had a good day there, saw the Wildlife Warriors show, including a pretty big croc and some very bored looking snakes. Sarah then had a flash of inspiration and decided that she wanted to have a picture taken with a snake. On my list of Top 5 things that I would least like to do, having a Burmese Python draped around my neck comes pretty high, but Sarah has a way of persuading me to do things that I don't want to do and once again she prevailed.

It wasn't as bad as I had expected, the snake (called Medusa) didn't try to strangle me, she must have already been fed, but she was very heavy. Thankfully the photographer was very speedy, because she started moving her head in my direction and I wasn't too keen on that!

Ssssssthcary

Australia Zoo appeared to be very well run, and the handlers seemed to genuinely love working with the animals, but I couldn't help thinking that they would be happier in the wild, especially when we saw a Tasmanian Devil running around his enclosure constantly, looking desperate to get out.

Not dead, just sleeping!

For our last weekend we decided to head up to Noosa again with Di and Dai. The weather was scorching again so we headed straight for the beach. As usual with our round the world trip, the surf was distinctly underwhelming, there was a fairly powerful wave breaking on the beach, but it was completely unsurfable, so instead we did a bit of bodysurfing. It was great fun, but we took a few heavy beatings from the waves and I was washing sand out of ears for days!!

Anyone for a swim?

That evening we went to a very nice restaurant overlooking the beach and had probably the best meal we had in all our time in Australia. It was fantastic and the service was excellent, although it was probably one of the nicer restaurants there it still worked out much cheaper than we would have paid for a similar meal at home.

The next day was our last full day in Australia, so we headed out to lovely Tea Tree Bay to have a look for some waves, as we rounded the headland we were shocked to find that there were some!!! Unfortunatley we were not alone, there were at least fifty other people in the water and because it is a point break, there is zero chance of getting a wave. Every wave already had at least three people already on it before it got to you, so in the end we gave up and headed back around to the main beach for some more bodysurfing.

Late that afternoon we headed back to Caloundra for the last time to pack our things up again and ready ourselves for moving on to New Zealand. But first we decided that we'd have a final dip in the pool. It all seemed to be going fine when Dai suddenly started racing to get out and shouting at me to do the same. What I soon discovered was that he had spotted that one of the electric lights was floating in the pool!! Thankfully, we managed to get out before being electrocuted, but it was a bit worrying really.

One minute they're there ... then they're gone

On Monday morning we said goodbye to Di at home and Dai drove us to the airport to get our flight. We said goodbye outside, the last time we'll see him and Di (except on MSN!) for a while. We had a great time both times we stayed with them and they really looked after us, we'll miss them both a lot.

So that was the end of our time in Australia, exactly three months, we'd used every last day that our visa had allowed and we had a great time. The people were very friendly, if a little cheeky about the cricket, although they did seem to quieten down a lot towards the end of the one day series!!

One of the main reasons why I was so keen to visit Australia was to get a chance to surf as many of the world famous surf breaks as possible. Unfortunately this never materialised, we must have been there for the worst couple of months for waves in years!

I'm sure we'll be back to visit anyway, I've got a brother to keep an eye on.......

For the second time in our trip, Dai and Di were there to pick us up from the airport when we arrived after our flight back from Cairns. It didn't take too long to settle back into life at Coolangatta - dinner at the Surf Club, our own bathroom and an endless supply of tea and coffee, plus a night of ten pin bowling. I do normally play best after a 24 hour flight from the UK so I wasn't surprised to come last.

Dai ended up with the nasty pair of shoes

With Dai back in work, we decided that along with Di, we would head into Brisbane City for a bit of a challenge - called 'For how long, and for how little money can you entertain yourselves in the capital of Queensland?'. Well I can tell you that you can certainly make a good start on this game by walking thirty minutes in the opposite direction to your first destination - which is exactly what we did while trying to find Parliament. Eventually we got there for a free tour, our guide not quite as amusing as the one in Victoria but very informative and the building was beautiful. After nearly wandering onto the set of a film called Fools Gold, which Kate Hudson is starring in (Di tried to get us parts as extras but they were having none of it) we had lunch in the Botanical Gardens. After that we crossed the Brisbane River to Southbank, to visit Brisbane Museum (also free!).

To save money we swam across rather than catching the ferry

The museum is huge on four floors with a mini cinema that was playing wildlife films (where Gareth and Di actually fell asleep). The highlight for me was the collection of dead and deadly critters, which included Redback Spiders, the Bluebottle Jellyfish and my personal favourite, the Coastal Taipan snake. We agreed that you can actually have quite a lot of fun in Brisbane for not much money, but a glass of champagne, a nice lunch and some money to go shopping would have made it even better!

My favourite view of a snake - bottled

Next day we had a day of relaxing before heading off to Conrad Jupiters Casino Complex at a place called Broadbeach, for Tempo Rouge. With money from Gareth's mum and dad we'd booked a show and dinner package - dinner was lovely - we ate it all before we had a chance to take any pictures and then it was down the the theatre for the show itself. Di had got us front row seats so it was a bit of a scary experience, you wanted to clap and enjoy yourselves but not make eye contact with any of the cast in case you ended up being dragged onto the stage. Luckily we avoided it - a man called Wayne who had the weirdest looking goatee beard got pulled up instead and I suppose that really is a lesson to him that if you have daft facial hair you are going to attract a bit of unwanted attention.

Next day was Australia Day - a public holiday in Australia which commemorates the anniversary of white settlement in Australia. At Kirra Beach, with a little help from Microsoft, the Surf Club had organised to be part of Look Up and Smile Day. Try as I might, I can't get the picture on here but you can view the 100 image if you type this address in your browser.

http://www.lookupandsmile.com.au/australia_day_above.aspx

We were part of the 1 in the 100 (with the lifesaver image). There are two photos that you should be able to see on the site.

The photo was all done and dusted by lunchtime so we decided to hire a speedboat and cruise down the Tweed River - well speedboat wasn't really an accurate description of this battered old boat that chugged its way breathlessly downstream.

Me and Di let the boys have a go - but they never quite got the hang of it

The water was crystal clear, so we stopped for a swim and a picnic before chugg chugging our way back home again.

Cherry bakewell anyone?

On the way back to the apartment we stopped quickly for a photo opportunity that we missed three years ago when on holiday and weren't going to miss this time around. Coolangatta and Tweed Heads are known as the twin towns - bang right next door to each other but Coolangatta is in Queensland and Tweed Heads is in New South Wales - meaning they are in different time zones.

Sarah was an hour late - again!

That night we were going out for another meal - this time courtesy of my mum and dad - so we had booked a lovely little Tapas place just around the corner. The girl at the till had looked a bit dopey when we made the booking a few days before but that's not unusual in Queensland so we didn't worry too much. We got ourselves dressed up and headed down there. Luckily we had the car because when we arrived the place was completely shut up and dark. Uh-oh. We got back in the car and drove to a place called the Ivory Hotel - where we managed to get ourselves a table and had a delicious meal, even better than the tapas would have been!

Disaster recovered!

Next day it was time to pack up everything to move on again - but this time we were all going together. While we'd been away up north, Dai and Di had decided to move to a new place in Caloundra (about an hour north of Brisbane and our first stop on the drive to Cairns).

We think they probably hoped to get away and leave no trace in Coolangatta before we got back - but we foiled them with our early return! So they had no choice but to let us tag along and put up with us for another few weeks ...

We couldn't let another blog entry go by without a special mention of Fi, who has been faithfully commenting on almost every blog entry we've made (and there have been a few).

We've detected a slight whiff of despair in her most recent comment:

Oh look - qu'elle surprise, it's me again! Doesn't anyone else leave comments?

So Fi, in recognition of your services to our blog, we would both like to present you with the Award for Most Dedicated Blog Commenter.

Sadly we can't be with you this evening to celebrate with you because we're on a world tour, but we hope you enjoy your win anyway.

Keep those comments coming - they always make us smile!

Love Sarah and Gareth xx

After a terrible night's sleep in Rockhampton we set off early towards Mackay to try to avoid a little of the heat.

Goodbye and good riddance

Our car was air conditioned but even with this it was still pretty uncomfortable in the heat of the day. The journey was pretty uneventful, more empty roads for mile upon mile, looking exactly the same.....and on, and on and on.....

We're on a road to nowhere

Eventually we arrived in Mackay, officially the 11th largest city in Australia. You could have fooled me! It may be a city geographically, but yet again we came across another deserted urban area. To be fair, it was Sunday, but even so, there was barely anything open and nobody was around. Thankfully there was a little Italian cafe open where we were able to get some lunch, as by this point we were starving. We both had fettuccine carbonara and it was very good.

We had originally planned to spend a night in Mackay, but as it was only midday and there was nothing to do, we decided that we would be better off carrying on the extra two hours to Airlie Beach.
Back on the road again...

Airlie Beach is really only a single main street full of tour agents selling sailing trips around the Whitsunday Islands. As this was what we wanted to do we had obviously come to the right place. We made the unusual decision of starting to look for somewhere to stay fairly early in the day and managed to get ourselves into a very pleasant little cabin in a caravan park only 2kms outside Airlie. It didn't have it's own bathroom, but most importantly it did have air conditioning and after our experience in the Rockhampton Hovel this was very important. It also had a proper mattress not a horrible foam one!

We didn't even have to go into town to book our sailing trip, we spoke to the lady in reception at the caravan park, told her what we wanted and the next thing we were booked on a two day, two night trip aboard a 14 metre sloop called Prima, leaving the next day (14 metres is about 46ft and no, I don't know what a sloop is either).

The boat trips have a rather funny policy of not allowing anyone to bring bags that have zips onto their boats. Apparently the zips can harbour bed bugs and it is to stop them being spread around the boats. What everybody does instead is take their belongings onboard in canvas shopping bags. It's quite funny walking around Airlie, because everybody is carrying shopping bags full of clothes around looking like tramps!

We had chosen our boat on the basis that it takes only a small group, maximum twelve passengers and it's not a party boat. We were very lucky because the boat wasn't full and there were only eight passengers plus four crew. I think that there were only supposed to be two crew, but the deckhand had brought his brother along and the skipper had brought his girlfriend along too, claiming that they were 'volunteers', chancers would have been more accurate, but what can you say when you're already out at sea and don't have a 'driver's' licence. It wasn't really a problem, but I did think it was a bit cheeky.

We were very fortunate with the rest of our group on the boat, everybody got on well, there were a Dutch couple, two girls from Scotland and a couple from Dublin and we had some good fun together.

The boat had four double 'rooms' - three of which had their own bathroom and one of which had a bathroom that was shared by the crew. Can you guess which one we had? Thought so!

The bedroom was rather cramped, but there was more room than I had expected, because the boat was fairly wide. Having said this it was significantly smaller than our train compartment in Thailand, so there wasn't much room to move around.

The basic plan appeared to be to sail around a couple of the islands, do some snorkelling, visit Whitehaven beach and come back to Airlie. First stop was for some snorkelling just off Hook Island, where we all hopped in the water and had a look around. Around the Whitsundays you have to wear stinger suits at this time of year, to avoid being stung by Box Jellyfish and Irukandji, which are small but extremely venomous. The stinger suits make you look a bit daft, but not as daft as you'd look if you were laying in the sea dying!

No reason to feel nervous then

We pulled up at a deserted beach to watch the sunset, which was pretty special - then back on board for some dinner, where mayonnaise featured heavily. It was a theme that would carry on for the rest of the trip....

Next morning we set sail for Tongue Cove on Whitsunday Island, which is the drop off point for the famous Whitehaven beach, the one that you see in all the brochures and on the postcards. Unfortunately the sun wasn't out and the tide was quite high, so it wasn't really showing off to it's full potential, but still looked pretty good. From the lookout you could see stingrays in the shallows, and when we got down to the beach there were quite a few young sharks in the shallows too, only about two to three foot long, but perfectly formed ready to grow into something a little more scary! My main concern was that Mummy shark may be waiting around only a little bit further out, so we didn't venture too far. Note from SR: Since this event I have read about a shark attack in this very place where we were paddling!

Next stop was Manta Ray Bay, where we had the best snorkelling I have ever seen. The visibility was very good, the coral reef was alive with vibrant colours and the fish were amazing. We were surrounded by all sorts of fish, but the ones that stood out were the Maori Wrasses. One in particular was huge, over a metre long and probably two and a half feet high, it came right up to you as you snorkelled, it was amazing. Note from SR: This is a typical fish story as told by a man - the fish gets bigger every time the story is repeated - it started life as a pilchard.

That night we anchored in a bay off Hook Island, where we were sheltered by the wind - unfortunately during the night the wind direction changed and the wind strength picked up. At about 2.30a.m. the crew got up to move the boat as the anchor was slipping and we were heading for the reef. Thankfully when we moved the boat the anchor got a decent hold and we were able to stay where we were for the rest of the night. We had another snorkel the next morning, but after Manta Ray Bay it was a bit of a letdown. We were back in port for lunchtime and Sarah and I were both shattered, neither of us had slept very well on either night as our cabin was so cramped and hot. Two nights at sea was more than enough for both of us and we were quite glad to get back to our little cabin at the caravan park.

We were up quite early on Thursday to head north again towards Townsville, but as always our plans were 'subject to change without prior notification'.

Looks promising, doesn't it?

It was a long drive up to Townsville, we went through several towns that looked significant on the map, but turned out to be a single street with a pub and a bottle shop! The drive was again pretty monotonous and we were glad to get to Townsville, which is the second largest city in Queensland. We headed straight for the centre and shortly afterwards were ready to leave. It was very similar to Mackay and Rockhampton in the way that there is nothing much at all in the town centre, everything is in out of town complexes, so the towns themselves seem dead and totally unappealing. It is totally reliant on people driving out to places to shop for anything, so there are very few, if any, decent places to get a cup of coffee or some lunch.

After a great deal of searching we eventually found somewhere to get a drink (and lift my severly depressed blood sugar levels) before we headed off again to Cairns.

For a moment we thought we were on the M4 in Bridgend

We had actually chosen a good day to travel, because the weather was pretty poor, raining on and off all day, so we weren't wasting a nice day that we could have been doing something else.

Is it a mirage or have we finally arrived?

After travelling through a succession of forgettable towns, it was quite a relief to get to Cairns, which is quite a lively place. It's obviously very popular with backpackers, but there are also a lot of nice (expensive) places to stay and eat, because the city is very popular with Japanese tourists. Many of the shops have signs and label in Japanese, and there are quite a few places offering Japanese food.

We headed into Cairns city centre that evening to see if we could get ourselves booked onto a diving boat in the next couple of days, and had a boat called Aristocat recommended to us. It was actually departing from Port Douglas, an hour north of Cairns, on Saturday, giving us a day to spare.

We decided that we'd head up to Port Douglas the following afternoon and stay there on Friday night so that we wouldn't have to drive too far on Saturday morning. Unfortunately Port Douglas is a lot like Noosa and we soon realised that staying there was going to cost us a fortune, so we called the motel that we had stayed in the night before and booked ourselves in for the night, then got a bag of chips and an ice cream before heading back to Cairns.

We were up early the next morning to get to the boat and we were very pleasantly surprised when we got there, it was very new and flash and only about one third full, so there was plenty of room to move about. The sea was like a millpond, so we had a very nice crossing to the Agincourt Reef, where we were to do our dives.

The first dive was quite good, but visibility wasn't great, particularly for Sarah, as her mask kept filling up with water! I think that we really need to get our own masks, the ones that you hire can be a bit unreliable.

"I'm ok ... I'm ok ... I'm ok ..."

The second dive was much better, and we saw a small shark, it swam around a bit, but wasn't very interested in us, so it wasn't very scary.

Spot the real shark

Had I been bleeding I may have been a little more concerned. We had one more dive, but again the visibility was a bit poor, but overall it was worth doing the dives, although not as great as I had hoped the Barrier Reef would be.

We still had one more day in Cairns before flying back down to Brisbane, so we decided to go inland to the Atherton Tablelands. First stop was a place called Coffeeworks where we were given a tour and were able to sample up to 21 different coffees. I think I only managed about twelve, I was a bit concerned that if I had anymore I wouldn't sleep for weeks. We then did a circuit of the waterfalls in the area and decided that we would visit the tea house in Millaa Millaa, which is highly recommended in the Lonely Planet, for afternoon tea (very civilised). We were both really looking forward to this as it was Sunday afternoon and we had been thinking about what we might have been doing back home on a Sunday afternoon - (bread, cheese, jam, Bob the Builder cakes and a nice pot of tea perhaps). Unfortunately when we got there at three o'clock in the afternoon, in true Australian business tradition, it was closed!

So that was it for our trip up north, we left tropical Queensland on Monday afternoon, just as the heavens opened for another downpour and headed south back to Brisbane and then on to Coolangatta to stay with Di and Dai again until we fly out to New Zealand.

A week into the new year it was time to leave the lap of luxury and get used to living in hovels, sorry, hostels, again, so Monday morning we picked up our car and headed north - destination Cairns - eventually.

We've only just begun...

The original plan had been to do the journey in a campervan but finding one that was air-conditioned, available and within our budget seemed impossible so we hired a car again. This time Gareth tried a new company which he told me had a 'super duper deal' that meant a double upgrade for free. I have my suspicions that this upgrade might actually have been paid for from our travel cocktails fund, since Gareth ended up with a Toyota Camry, which made him very happy, and I have ended up with no daiquiris or margaritas, which has left me very thirsty.

Not that we needed any alcohol since as predicted in the last blog entry, we both started the journey with white wine induced monster hangovers. Our first stop was Caloundra, on the Sunshine Coast, only an hour north of Brisbane - less to do with planning and more to do with needing some greasy food. Caloundra was hot, sticky and busy so we avoided the heat and the crowds for most of the day by staying in coffee shops, internet cafes and the post office. Being a bit out of practice it was nearing 5pm when we realised we still didn't have anywhere to stay. Luckily the visitor centre helped us out and found us a motel in Maleny, in the mountains just outside Caloundra. I was bitten to bits by mossies after stepping out of our room for five minutes but it was a small price to pay for a roof over our heads.

Tuesday morning we had a couple of things to do before we carried on north. First we searched out the village of Reesville, definitely labelled on the Sunshine Coast map but not so easy to find in reality.

It's definitely around here somewhere!

We saw a few signs for it and drove past some Welsh-sounding homes - plus it was raining and hilly - so it looked like Wales - we think that must have been it.

Next stop was the Big Pineapple - there are lots of 'Big' things around Australia but this was the first thing we'd seen. It was just a big hollow pineapple that you could climb up inside and have your photo taken outside of, but I liked it!

Would make a lot of ham and pineapple toasties

Our next major stop was Noosa. We had visited Noosa before, almost exactly three years to the day, and my recollection was of an eight hour round trip to get there, broken in the middle for an hour, during which time I had an expensive coffee and Gareth discovered there was no surf. Luckily this time Noosa was only a thirty minute drive from the Big Pineapple but there was still no surf for Gareth. Some things never change ...

We spent the afternoon having a wander around, jumping into air-conditioned shops (it was hotter than Caloundra) then we walked to Tea Tree Bay - spotting our first couple of wild koalas on the way - and watched the spot where the surf was supposed to be. It never did turn up for us.

After a night in the Royal Mail Hotel - a room above a pub in a place that Gareth described as Hotel California - next day it was back on the road - this time for Hervey Bay on the Fraser Coast. We were desperate for a bit of long-term air-con so we went to the cinema to see Happy Feet. Well that's how I sold it to Gareth and it worked. The film could probably have been renamed Smelly Feet as every now and again there was a waft of something cheesy - (in defence of Gareth's feet I must admit that this was similar to the smell in the cinema in Coolangatta when we saw Casino Royale - so I think it must be an Oz cinema thing - although of course Gareth and his feet were present on both occasions so I can't be sure).

The Friendly Hostel in Hervey Bay was the cheapest we'd stayed in so far in Oz and was pretty decent. There were only four rooms in the unit so it was nice and quiet and the owner was helpful - making only one request - that we didn't leave our rucksacks on the bed as this transferred bed bugs from hostel to hostel. Bed bugs? This was something I hadn't even considered until now! How was I supposed to fit worrying about bed bugs in around worrying about snakes, sharks, jellyfish, crocs, rampaging kangaroos, evil mosquitoes and smelly feet?

It was a (rare) early start for us on Thursday - we were booked onto a one day trip across the Great Sandy Straits to Fraser Island. This is the world's largest sand island, apparently containing more sand than the Sahara desert and famous for its beautiful (croc-less) freshwater lakes, rainforest and white sandy beaches. It took nearly an hour to reach Moon Bay by ferry and along the way our Captain kept telling us to look over the edge for 'marine creatures'. I think most people were looking for rays and turtles but I was mindful of what I had read in the guidebook - don't swim off the beaches of Fraser Island - they are full of man-eating sharks. I would be happier when we reached Fraser Island. In fact, I would really be happier when we had been to Fraser Island and come back safe again.

Moments later the man-eating sharks took her...

Our guide for the day was Richard - or Richo as he liked to be called. Originally from Hertfordshire, he did a great job of driving our four wheel drive off-road bus through the deep sandy tracks around the island and definitely knew his stuff, but as Gareth said, he could have talked a glass eye to sleep. Our tour included visits to Lake Garawongera(completely clear but the colour of tea from the tannin in the nearby trees), Eli Creek (pouring up to four million litres of clear, fresh water into the sea every hour) , the Lidney rainforest and the wreck of the Maheno.

Aye, aye cap'n

Best of all though was driving 18km down seventy five mile beach, with the tide lapping at the wheels of the bus. Sadly we saw no dingoes on the island - since there are no domestic dogs allowed on Fraser Island the dingoes are said to be some of the purest in Oz. They also have a reputation for being aggressive as a result of having got used to human interaction - and in particular - being fed by humans who come to visit. Maybe it's better we didn't see them...

After another night at the Friendly Hostel with no bed bug attacks thanks to Mrs Friendly's rucksack policy, it was north again to Bundaberg.

Bundaberg seems to be famous for one thing - its rum. I got a bit confused here between the Bundaberg bear - he's white and says 'Follow your nose' and the Hofmeister bear, who if I recall correctly, used to wear a bomber jacket and said 'Follow the bear' or something like that.

Gareth hits the bottle again

Anyway, we took a quick tour of the distillery, which was nothing special and pretty hard work in the searing heat - but the bonus was the free tasters you got at the end. Seeing as he was driving, Gareth stuck to the soft stuff but I tried out Bundaberg Royal Liqueur - a delicious mix of coffee, chocolate, caramel, sugar and rum - our tour guide described it as the five major food groups! It was very nice but unfortunately you can only buy it at the distillery and there is no room in my rucksack for anything, not even alcohol, at the moment.

It was a long drive on to Rockhampton that afternoon - and of course I dodged it all because of my drinking.

Are we there yet?

At 7pm we rolled up at our accommodation for the night. To pass the time and save our precious dollars, Gareth and I play this game called 'Drive the price of the room down'. This worked particularly well in Sri Lanka and helped us get used to a rapid downwards spiral in accommodation quality. We'd forgotten the game once we got to Oz since there didn't seem to be much variation in price BUT the East Coast was different with lots to play for. In the spirit of that game Gareth had booked us in, for TWO nights, at the Ascot Stonegrill Backpackers. Walking into our room, I realised that in this game, you get all you deserve. It looked more like a prison cell, with a bed covered by a thick, nasty looking and well-stained rug and an electric fan, covered by an even thicker of dust. It got even worse at bedtime. By now, the temperature was still safely in the 30s so the room was roasting - and when I lay down on the bed I discovered it was a foam mattress with no spring in it whatsoever - plus on one side of us there was the lounge where the TV was blaring and on the other side was the main road, with racer boys zooming up and down the road all night long. Eventually I think I must have passed out...

Next day it was time for an education session. You'll remember that as soon as we arrived in Australia we visited the Aquarium of Western Australia to get to grips with all the things we needed to avoid in the sea. Now that we were getting into North Queensland we were in crocodile country and we needed a bit of background info - so we headed to Koorana Crocodile Farm for a tour. The tour started with our guide handing out a piece of crocodile leather and a massive croc skin with all the knobbly armour plating down the back - telling everyone to have a good feel. Well I decided not to just in case I ever find myself face-to-face with a crocodile - at least I'll know I'm not being punished for holding the remains of one of his beloved relatives. After the introduction we got out into the farm and started meeting the crocs - and they were pretty scary.

Would make a lovely pair of shoes and matching handbag

What I understand now is that crocodiles can be very grumpy. We heard lots of stories about how some of the male crocs had been moved to different enclosures after beating up or sometimes eating up their girlfriends and we met Shah, a croc who drowned his keeper in Townsville Zoo back in the fifties because he didn't like the noise of the lawnmower. We were also told to look out for the three signs of crocodile territory - the nest, the wallow (a puddle of water) and the slide - where the croc moves into the water. After a quick cuddle with Harley, a young croc whose jaws where safely taped up, we left the farm, suitably terrified of going anywhere near water for the rest of our time in Australia. Job done then.

Really, it was bigger in real life!

We drove the 45 kms back to Rockhampton, hoping to have a wander around what is supposed to be one of the major cities of Queensland - but at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon everything was closed, so we turned the car around and headed to Yeppoon, a small seaside town where we managed to find some signs of life and a fish and chips supper. After delaying as long as possible we had no choice to go back to the Ascot Stonegrill Backpackers and our hot little cell. We set the alarm for an early getaway ready for the journey onto Mackay next day ...

So it was back to the Gold Coast for a few more days before we were due to head north to Cairns and there was quite a bit that we wanted to fit in.

Dai had secretly arranged a tour for us of Queensland's wineries, so he had us up early on Wednesday morning to be picked up by Peter of Cork 'n' Fork Wine and Food Tours to take us into the hills of the Gold Coast Hinterland.

The basic plan appeared to be to do a tour of four wineries and a distillery. Now that's what I call a day out!

First stop was a winery whose office and reception area was actually the former governor's residence in Brisbane. Apparently a few years ago it was put up for auction and the winery's owners bought it. As it was a wooden building they were able to cut it into sections, put them on lorries and then transport them the 60 odd miles into the hills to be rebuilt on their land. Proper recycling.

The wine was pretty good, particularly a slightly sweet red wine called Poinciana that is served chilled, so we bought a bottle. It was here that the art of 'trilling' was explained to us. What you do is hold some wine in the front of your mouth, then breathe air in over the top of it, this is supposed to speed up the alcoholic effect, apparently this is something that wine experts do to assess quality. Sounds more like something a drunken bum would do to get howling quicker to me!!

Early morning drinker

After a quick stop at Witches Falls winery we went to Tamborine Mountain Distillery, where a mad old chap who looked like Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses was making alcohol out of anything he could get his hands on. He was handing out shots to try like it was nobody's business, it was a good job nobody was driving!

We had a very nice lunch and more wine tasting, then another wine tour before we were returned to Coolangatta. We decided that we'd give the Mexican restaurant downstairs a try that evening before going out for our music night and when we arrived the waitress took us out to the balcony. It was then that the Christmas beetle struck! This beetle which was about the size of a Cadbury's Creme Egg (Sarah's description) decided to attach itself to the bottom of the waitress' trousers. It kept hissing at us as we tried to remove it - apparently they bite - in the end she managed to remove it with the aid of a menu. We chose to eat inside.

When Sarah and I were in Melbourne we saw a poster advertising a Matt Costa concert in Coolangatta. Neither of us knew who he was or what his music was like, so we bought his CD then got some tickets so that we could all go along and see! Rather fortunately the venue for the concert was the Coolangatta Hotel, which is directly below Di and Dai's apartment block.

They knew we were coming

It wasn't very full and they were offering 2 for 1 tickets on the door, which wasn't a good sign. The support act turned out to be a surfer that I had heard of called Timmy Curran and he and his small band were very good, I would definitely go and see them again. Matt Costa had a much larger band and was OK, but when he said how pleased he and his band were to be there, it wasn't very convincing. Certainly his bassist didn't seem to know where he was!

My one's bigger than yours

We just relaxed and went to the beach on Thursday, but as this was a bit boring we decided that we'd go to Byron Bay on Friday. We got up early and headed down there, it's only about an hour from Coolangatta, so we were there quite early, but as we'd crossed the border into New South Wales we jumped forward an hour.

I had been looking forward to going to Byron Bay for some time as there is a surfboard shaper based there called Bob McTavish and he is a bit of a legend in the surfing world. I had also seen on his website that they hire some of their surfboards and we thought it would be good to hire a couple from there as they would be nicer than the usual hire boards. As we came to the outskirts of Byron Bay I spotted the shop and we pulled in. We walked into the showroom and were greeted by a young Australian guy who was looking after the shop. Hhe asked us where we were from - when we said Wales he proceeded to speak to us like we had never seen a surfboard before and didn't really belong in his shop! I was tempted to ask him which side the wax goes on and whether the fins were hand grips. Instead I asked about hiring some boards and he clearly didn't want to hire them to us, he said they were expensive ones and we'd be better off getting some in town, what a great salesman! One thing is for sure, he's made sure that I'll never buy a Bob McTavish surfboard. It's a strange attitude when you consider that Byron Bay is a real holiday place and 80% of the people that go into their shop must be tourists.

We then headed off to Byron Bay Longboards, where the guy was only too pleased to hire us a couple of boards and some bodyboards for the girls and we went off for a fun surf on the main beach.

That evening after dinner we were enjoying one of the bottles of wine we had picked up on our tour when Dai produced the quote of the trip so far, he said 'It's amazing what you can do with a grape'!! How right he was, although I think he may have consumed a few glasses of the grape product by this point.

Di was getting really fed up of telling Sarah to put the toilet seat down

Saturday was time to go to the Wet'n'Wild Theme Park, where we had a fantastic time on various rides. We went on the Mammoth Falls ride six times! Some things you never grow out of.

On Sunday night we had a farewell barbecue on the headland between Coolangatta and Kirra, it has a great view and free electric barbecues. We took a couple of bottles of wine and by the end of the evening Sarah, Diane and I had managed to empty more than a couple more. We were definitely going to have a hangover to start our journey north!

We decided before we came away that it would be a great experience to spend New Year's Eve in Sydney, or to be more specific, in Sydney Harbour. Urban myth has it that there are more sharks inside Sydney Harbour than outside. Now I'm not a marine biologist, but I am aware that outside the harbour is the whole of the Pacific Ocean, so I have my doubts that this is accurate. Despite this we decided that we wouldn't take any risks and booked ourselves onto the plushest looking boat that we could find doing the rounds of the harbour on New Year's Eve.

First we had to get there, so it was up early on the 30th to catch a flight back to Sydney, which was an hour ahead, so we lost a little bit of 2006. When we were booking the whole trip to Sydney, the only place that we could get to stay in Sydney was a hotel in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney, it didn't look very far on the pop-out map of Sydney, but turned out to be half an hour by train. (Our friend Lee Ann had told Sarah that staying in Parramatta is a bit like staying in Reading for a night out in London - there were certainly similarities.)

As it turned out this wasn't much of a problem as you can get a ferry down the Parramatta River to Circular Quay (next to the Opera House), so that's exactly what we did. (More public transport for Sarah.)

The ferry wasn't the only plus for Sarah. On the way down the river we spotted that there was a funfair in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge, and there's nothing that Sarah likes more in the world than funfairs (well, maybe tails). So that was Saturday night sorted out, they had quite a few entertaining rides, but only one that I will remember for the rest of my life....

We had just come off a strange spinning ride that made me feel a little queasy, when Diane spotted a ride on the map called Rotor. As you went up the steps you were given the option of going into the ride or going to the viewing platform first, well obviously we weren't going to do the sensible thing and we headed straight in to have a go.

Rotor consists of a cylinder where the riders stand against the outside wall as it is spun around at about 70km/h (so I was told), so that you stick to the wall, then the floor drops away and you just hang there. I remember doing the whole centrifugal force thing in GCSE Science and I know why this works, but I'm still not happy about it. The force holding you against the wall was so strong that you couldn't move a muscle and it actually made it quite difficult to breathe, so I was very glad when it stopped, although for some strange reason as they slowed the ride down, they allowed us to slide down the wall, rather than bringing the floor back up to meet us! If anybody has ever seen the film 'Spies Like Us' with Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd, then we looked very similar to them after going through astronaut training, with faces contorted from the G forces.

Geddit?

This was quite enough excitement for one night, so after a leisurely ride on the ferris wheel we hopped back over to the other side of the harbour to find someting to eat. Unfortunately it was now 10.30pm and most places were shut, so we headed to the one place we knew would be open....an Indian restaurant!

After a hard night's work we had a lay in the following day, followed by a very nice lunch by the river in Parramatta, where Dai managed to polish off a giant bowl of wedges as well as a fillet steak. Then it was off into Sydney for New Year's Eve.

We expected it to be quite busy getting into Sydney, but it wasn't actually too bad, there were very regular trains and we got in in no time. On our way to the wharf to catch the boat there was a bit of excitement as sirens were going off all over the place - it turned out that a flat above the Wagamama restaurant on Darling Harbour was on fire, so obviously Dai had to get in the way and start taking pictures. Anyone who didn't know him would think he was a paparazzi photographer.

Thankfully our boat wasn't on fire, but it was very full - considering how much we'd paid for the trip we had expected something with a little more space, although as a bonus they did have a DJ who looked like Freddie Starr, thankfully his language was a little cleaner!

Happy New Year!

There were two firework displays that night and the first one was at nine o'clock. This was better than any other firework display that I have ever seen, and that was just the warm up! There was non-stop tail food being dished out, so we didn't go hungry, or thirsty for that matter. Everybody onboard was getting rapidly more drunk ready for the big moment and it came rather suddenly. We were standing on the bow looking at the Harbour Bridge when suddenly they started counting down from ten. As the new year came in a mass of fireworks exploded in every direction and continued for what seemed an age. Apparently the cost of the fireworks was AU$4m.

The next thing we knew they were heading back to Darling Harbour to boot us off and that was New Year's Eve for us. As the authorities in Sydney had called it 'A diamond night in the emerald city'.

As you would expect, we weren't awake too early the following day and weren't really in the mood for anything too energetic, so we had lunch in a pub down the road and then decided to watch a film in the hotel. Dai and Di had decided that they would like to watch 'Snakes on a Plane'. If anybody reading this is considering watching this monstrosity then please take my advice and don't bother, I would normally explain the plot at this point, but there wasn't really one, the title tells you all you need to know!

We decided that as we had made the effort to come to Sydney, we should really try to go and have something to eat somewhere nice around the harbour and we found a lovely place right on the the water near the Opera House. Sarah, Diane and I all decided to go for the king prawns and we were presented with a giant bucket of them.

Seefood diet!

The food was great, but unfortunately we were seated outside when the heavens opened and we had to try to fit under the tiniest umbrella to keep ourselves and our dinner dry.

On our last day we had decided that it would be fun to climb Sydney Harbour Bridge, so we pitched up at the Bridgeclimb office to be kitted out in grey overalls and shown how to use our harnesses, then we were off onto the bridge. It wasn't as scary as you might expect, the paths that you climb up are quite wide most of the way, but the views are spectacular. The whole thing takes about three hours, which would be quicker if they didn't keep stopping to take photos of everybody, but it's definitely worthwhile and I would recommend it to anybody visiting Sydney.

Don't look down!

We learnt quite a lot about the bridge during the climb - it weighs 38,000 tonnes and is actually held up by the metal framework. The stone pylons on either side serve no structural purpose, they just look nice! The metalwork transfers all of the weight of the bridge onto 8 metal pins, 4 on either side of the bridge, which are known as King Pins. The King Pins are capable of holding up to 80,000 tonnes in weight. I don't know if there is supposed to be an apostrophe at the start of King Pin or not.....

So that was it for our return trip to Sydney, a short but very enjoyable few days.

After our flying visit to Sydney, we hopped on yet another plane and headed up the East Coast to Coolangatta, in Queensland, for Christmas in the sun with Gareth's brother Dai and his wife Di. To get into the Christmas spirit Gareth was wearing a Santa hat and I had a furry Christmas pudding on my head - it was a good idea in my head but walking through the airport I felt just a little bit self-conscious.

Dai and Di have just emigrated to Australia so we caught up on the gossip from home as we settled into our home for the next three weeks. After all this time unpacking and packing our rucksacks almost every other night it was bliss to unpack our things into our bedroom, knowing we would be here for a while. Most importantly, there was a washing machine for Gareth to wash his stinking trainers which had been smelling more and more like a pair of decomposing rats in recent weeks.

Dai and Di's apartment is a stone's thrown from the white sand beach, with a view of the sea from the balcony (very handy for Gareth to check the surf every morning). We'd already decided on our plan of action for our time in Coolangatta - we were going to relax, live like locals and indulge in a bit of retail therapy - and that was exactly what we did for a week until Christmas.

Tipsy cowboy Rees

It's very strange being in the sun at Christmastime - but we still managed to get in the mood.

No really, this is our own hair

Gareth's entries on the blog might have you thinking I'm nothing but a cocktail guzzling undomesticated old soak who couldn't tell one end of frying pan from the other but me and Di kept ourselves very busy preparing everything for Christmas - icing the Christmas cake (with the help of a clingfilmed wine bottle in the absence of a rolling pin - this always works better if you drink the contents of the bottle first), making homemade cranberry sauce and stuffing and buying up the bulk of Queensland's Christmas cracker supplies. On Christmas Eve - all jobs done - we joined the rest of Coolangatta - and Santa himself - for Carols and Fireworks on the Beach. I'm not sure how well this combination would work in Dewi Sant in Tumble but it looked pretty special on the beach in Oz.

Dai's beard had got really out of control

"Yes, we have been very, very good this year"

Christmas morning we were up very early for the Grand Webcam Plan. At 5am we got ourselves out of bed and drove to Currumbin, a little way up the coast. I think that 5am is the earliest I have been awake on Christmas morning since - well - last Christmas probably. In Australia, there are loads of webcams set up so that you can check the surf conditions, and it just so happened that the webcam on Currumbin beach also had a view of the car park. So while our families waited and watched online at home, we bounced around the car park like nutters, wearing Santa hats and waving wildly. Luckily it wasn't too busy in the car park but I'm sure the people there wondered why four crazy Welsh weirdos were running around in circles, waving at a brick wall and talking into mobile phones. Still, the plan worked and although we were a bit fuzzy on screen, we were definitely there!

"Can I get two chicken dopiazas, a lamb bhuna, pilau rice and a plain naan to take away?"

Back at the apartment we tucked into a breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup, strawberries and ice cream, accompanied by champagne brandies - well it wouldn't be Christmas otherwise would it? It was all wolfed down pretty sharpish because it was the only thing standing between us and the pile of presents under the Christmas tree.

I think that Gareth and I must have been very, very good all year because we did very well with our presents. Between us we had quite a few urgent replacements for items in our rucksacks, including new clothes, toothbrushes and possibly best of all, new pants. (You may notice that in future pictures we've moved away from our brown, green and orange theme to blue and pink - that's clothes, not pants. Don't worry we're not going to be showing you pictures of our pants.)

Dressed in new clothes we packed up the picnic hamper and headed off to the beach for a Christmas day sunbathe and splash in the sea. The day had started off a bit cloudy but luckily it all cleared and the sun came out for us.

The sun in Australia is very strong - you should ALWAYS wear a sunhat

We all headed into the sea with our Santa hats still on and it was all going swimmingly well until Di got out of the water after being stung by a bluebottle jellyfish. The boys had already had a couple of minor run-ins with the little buggers whilst surfing but this one was obviously a monster. It had managed to wrap its tentacle around Di's leg a few times before finishing off with a little 'whip' and leaving evil red welts on her leg. So we headed back to the apartment for some ice treatment and luckily it didn't take too long to work and ease the pain.

We'd planned to eat our Christmas dinner on the balcony looking out to the beach but the high winds that picked up during the day put paid to that. Eventually we sat down to dinner, only about an hour later than we planned, and considering the limitations of Di's oven (one setting - fierce) I think between us we did very well indeed and our dinner was delicious.

Just like home, only 9470 miles away

Boxing Day brought rain and cloud, but we braved it anyway to drive to Mount Tamborine. The views from the mountain are supposed to be spectacular but we couldn't really see anything and ended up playing pool in a bar along the way. When we got back to the apartment we decided that seeing as Australian TV is so dreadful we would hire a DVD. The boys went out and came back with 'Walk the Line' - the Johnny Cash story. It's very good if any of you are thinking of watching it. Next night we let the boys choose again and they picked something called Inside Man. That was dreadful and me and Di fell asleep before the end. Obviously beginners luck!

The pro circuit beckons for Gareth

The rest of the week went by quickly - we kept ourselves busy stuffing ourselves with the Christmas leftovers and getting ready for our New Year trip to Sydney - and Gareth will tell you all about that soon!

My husband and I, would like to wish all our loyal subj ... we mean blog readers, festive greetings from our current residence down under...

No really, we're sending this Christmas message to all our family and friends who are faraway now. We've arrived with Dai and Di in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast and although it's strange being in the sun at this time of year, you'll be able to see that we're all getting into the Christmas spirit. We'll be spending Christmas Eve singing carols on the beach and tomorrow we'll be sitting down to a traditional Christmas turkey dinner in the evening, on the balcony.

We hope that everyone at home, or in any of the places we've stopped along the way has a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

With love, Gareth and Sarah xx