Professor, punk, pyschopath, pensioner and a pub quiz

We arrived in Kaiteriteri- a small town on the doorstep of Abel Tasman National Park, on the tip of the west coast of the South Island.

Whilst the scenery was really nice, we weren't too lucky with the weather after the first day so didn't see much of it! On the morning of the second day most of the guys on our bus set off for the next town, leaving us four and a couple behind as the only people in the hostel! It was actually quite cool as we practically had the place to ourselves. With the weather miserable outside we lounged around and caught up on some life admin- applying for jobs etc!

By the third night the next bus arrived which was good as we were beginning to get cabin fever. We met up with some friends on the bus behind us, who'd heard that there was a pub quiz on in the evening, so we popped down and only bloody won the thing!!! $70 bar tab thanks very much.

Next stop was Westport, a small stopover at a cosy hostel that was more like someone's home than a backpacker spot. We cooked an amazing meal of bangers and mash with onion gravy with Daniel off our bus. Yum.

Making our way down the west coast, we reached Lake Mahinapua for a 'P party', not before stopping in Greymouth for outfit supplies. After going through every word we could think of beginning with 'P', we decide on a Punk, a Professor, a Psychopath and a Pensioner. The whole kiwi bus descended on the town, trawling through Greymouth's charity shop, joke shop and supermarket to rustle together outfits.

We headed to our hostel, which was essentially a load of porta-cabins stuck together. Pretty basic! We had tasty steak for dinner and then everyone headed back to their rooms to transform into their chosen 'P word'.  Everyone looked cool and we had a pretty awesome night!

Skydives and Pub Crawls

As we were en-route to Taupo our Kiwi Experience driver handed around our optional activities choices for the next two days. The main one was a Skydive. The sky was blue and cloudless, apparently perfect weather for throwing yourself out of a plane, so we thought it's now or never, and signed ourselves up!

We had a quick stop on the way to Taupo to see one of New Zealand's fastest flowing waterfalls and within a couple of hours we were being suited and harnessed up ready for our drop from 12,000ft. We piled into a small, pink aeroplane where we were each attached to our skydive instructors. We were given very few instructions; basically, keep your legs back and your head up!

The climb to 12,000ft took about 20 minutes and the view was amazing (although as nerves start to take hold you don't appreciate the scenery as much!). We were above Lake Taupo, one of New Zealand's largest lakes. It's big enough to fit the whole of Singapore in, and still have room to sail around the edge - which is weird, considering the population of Singapore is bigger than the population of New Zealand!

The freefall lasted about 45 seconds, and was a really weird, but awesome sensation. Once the chute is pulled, the sound of wind roaring passed your ears suddenly stops and there's an unexpected silence as you calmly glide back to earth. This part lasts about 3 minutes, and you can relax and take in the amazing scenery.

Following that adrenaline fuelled afternoon a trip to the nearest bar was in order! After a few drinks and a big game of innuendo bingo we were physically and mentally drained and headed to bed.

The next day we experienced Lake Taupo up close instead of from thousands of feet above by going for a scenic walk around it. That night we had a mass congregation of Kiwi Experience travellers in our dorm room for pre-going out drinking games, and then went on to the club next door. 

The next morning we headed of for New Zealand's capital city, Wellington. On the way there we stopped for a walk around the bottom of Mount Ngauruhoe (aka Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings). Nothing like a nice mountainous trek to cure our hangovers.

That night we met up with the other Kiwi Exers again for another night out, bar crawling our way through the streets of Wellington. We saw a live band, argued with some locals about whether or not we were dressed like "hipsters" and got caught in the pouring down rain. A good night all in all!

The next day we all went to Wellington Museum, which was really cool. Nothing like a nice educational afternoon to cure our hangovers. After that we all pooled our funds and made the biggest fish finger feast you've ever seen. There were more fish fingers on our plates than there are sheep in New Zealand.

We were somehow convinced to go out again that night. We started off with pre-drinks in our dorm again, but this time we were ambushed by "housekeeping" who threatened to throw us out for drinking in the dorm rooms. It was apparently a strict "dry hostel". 

Having being rumbled we put away our drink, barricaded the door, and got out our drink.

We arrived back at the hostel the following morning at 3am where Daniel, our unofficial Kiwi photographer, cooked us all pancakes. We headed to bed with full stomachs for a meager 3 or 4 hours before getting back up to catch our ferry to the south island. Nothing like a nice 3 hour boat ride to cure our hangovers.

Rotorua: Hot Pools and Maori Warriors

We left hot water beach that morning, and headed to Waitomo, a place famous for caves that are lit up by glowworms! On the way we stopped at a small village where they used to have goldmining, and went for a walk through some pitch black tunnels, where we had to hold onto the persons shoulders in front of us so we knew where we were going! We got to Waitomo about lunchtime and went for a tour of the famous glowworm caves. We were guided around the caves and then got onto a boat where we were taken through a cave which was lit up solely by hundreds of  glowworms on the ceiling, which was very cool! After that we went for a walk up to a lookout point, before going back to the hostel for dinner!

We left the next day to go to Rotorua, where Marc and Steven went luging for the afternoon (basically like go carting but down a massive hill)! 

When they got back to the hostel, we all went to meet Amberlea, Amy's stepsister, and Wade her boyfriend, for some drinks. We didn't stay out too late, as Amberlea and Wade had offered to show us around Rotorua the next day!

We started off the next day by taking Amberlea's dog, Flynn for a walk through the redwood forest, to a lookout point where you can see the whole of Rotorua, including lots of steaming geothermal hot pools! We then went to watch a bike race, where the participants are all in fancy dress, they have to down a bottle of beer after each lap they do, and the winner has to get a tattoo!

Next we went for lunch and then went to where Wade works to watch some white water rafting! Towards the end Flynn even jumped onto one of the rafts and did some rafting himself!

To end the day, we went to Kerosene Creek, which is a hot water creek where you can swim at the bottom of a waterfall, and the water is about 38 degrees!! We stayed there as the sun went down and then went back to the hostel to have a night out in the hostel bar!

The next day we were all a bit hungover, but we still managed to go for a walk around Lake Rotorua. That evening, we had booked a Maori experience. We all got onto the bus, and the first thing we had to do was choose a chief to represent the group... Then when we got there, we were shown the Maori ritual they used to do to see whether a visitor was a friend or foe before letting them into the village. Basically, the chiefs had to stand at the front and try not to be intimidated by the Maori men shouting and pulling faced at them! Once we were let inside the village, we were taken around different houses to learn about different aspects of the Maori culture. There was some audience participation, and Steven got pulled up to learn the hukka, and to play a game which was used to train Maori warriors!

After the games, we watched a performance of traditional Maori songs and dances, which was really good! Then we went for a Hukka meal, where the food is put in a hole underground and covered by hot rocks until it's cooked! We had chicken and lamb, which was absolutely delicious! Once we had eaten as much as we could we headed back to the hostel, ready to go to Taupo the next day.

Kia ora New Zealand- First stop Auckland

We arrived into Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud (AKA New Zealand), in the North Island and into the country's largest city - Auckland.  We caught the shuttle bus from the airport down to the centre of town, and our hostel was situated just around the corner.  It was a pretty cool Nomads hostel, with a rooftop hot tub and a nice
bar.

We shared our dorm with a good group of people.  There was Jack, a former New Zealand's Got Talent contestant from the world's most southerly city, Invercargill, plus three Londoners, Katie, Manu and Matt.  We had a couple of nights out them, where we played drinking games in our room before hitting the Auckland bars!

After a couple of days in the City, we caught a bus to Paihia in the Bay of Islands in the very north of New Zealand.  From there, we went up to Cape Reinga, which is (almost) the most northerly point of New Zealand.  We walked up to the lighthouse there, where we were able to see the Tasman Sea meeting the Pacific Ocean, causing unsettled waters and a noticeable difference in the colour of each sea.

Our bus travelled along 90 Mile Beach - a beach highway, similar to the one we travelled on in Fraser Island.  We stopped along the beach and dug up some cockles to each fresh from the beach! 

After our snack, our bus took us along the beach to some huge sand dunes, where we had an awesome time sandboarding!

The next day, we got a ferry across from Paihia to Russell, which was a really nice little beach town.  We stayed here all morning before getting the ferry back to Paihia and then a bus back to Auckland. 

On our last day in Auckland, we visited the Sky Tower, which had amazing views of the city.

Cairns: Final Destination of Oz

Our final stop in Australia was Cairns which is a cool town with a huge manmade lagoon overlooking the ocean. We spent the first night exploring the town and the night market before going for dinner in the Woolshed, a backpacker bar that quickly became our local for the 5 days in Cairns. We spent the following day lounging by the lagoon in the sun - after all of the rain we had in Airlie Beach, it was good to be back in the sunshine!

On our second night we were booked onto the infamous Cairns pub crawl. There were about 100 backpackers taking part and we were driven around Cairns in the party bus - an open top double decker kitted out with disco lights and a huge sound system! We stopped in 5 clubs that featured table top dancing, drunken party games, a live band and masses of free pizza!

The next day we treated our hangovers with a picnic and more laying around by the lagoon. That evening we had an all you can eat chinese buffet and had an early night to prepare us for our early start the next morning for a Great Barrier Reef sailing and snorkelling trip.

The trip started out a bit cloudy, but the sun soon came back out and after about an hour of sailing we got into our wet suits, flippers and snorkels and went for a swim with the fish! The water was a bit murkier than our snorkelling trip in the Whitsundays, but the coral reef was still amazing, and we were soon surrounded by a school of huge fish when the captain started throwing shrimp into the water to attract them!

After an hour or so of snorkelling, we stopped off at Green Island, where there was a stunning beach surrounding a tropical rainforest. We then sailed back to Cairns and headed back to the Woolshed for a Chilli and a beer.

We spent the next couple of days between the lagoon and the Woolshed and on the the morning of our 6th day we jumped on a flight to Brisbane, waved goodbye to Australia, and caught our flight to New Zealand.

Whitsundays Sailing Adventure!

We arrived at Airley Beach, the stop off before our Whitsundays sailing trip, and checked into a nice hostel where each dorm was in it's own self contained building surrounding an outdoor pool and hot tub. Unfortunately it was raining constantly, so we couldn't put them to good use!

The next morning we went to find our boat. It was a catameran called 'wings', complete with a hot tub!! The weather was stilll looking pretty grey when we got on the boat, and it only got worse when we were out on the open sea! It started getting pretty rocky as we headed to our first snorkel/diving site, and Amy, Gareth and Steven were all starting to feel pretty seasick! It was still cold and raining when we got to the site, so we decided not to bother with the snorkelling, although Marc decided to go for a dive!

After that we had an amazing buffet dinner, and finished off the night with a box of goon, getting to know the other passengers!

The next morning we woke up to a lot nicer weather, and the boat headed to Whitehaven Beach, where the sand is almost 100% sillica, which means it's absolutely beautiful white sand! The sun was out by that point so we had a play around on the beach and then in the water, where Marc and Steven saw a baby shark! We headed back to the boat for lunch, and got to our next snorkel site. We all went for a snorkel and saw lots of amazing coral and fish. We saw clownfish (aka Nemos) and got to swim alongside a big turtle!!

That evening we moored in a bay which was well known for having dolphins in it. The captain put on some blue lights at the back of the boat which apparently attract squid and fish, which the dolphins then come to eat! We were all drinking out at the back of the boat, and sure enough, two or three dolphins appeared and started playing in the lights! They were coming so close to us we could have stroked them!

The next day there was one more early morning snorkel, before we headed back to shore. The weather got really bad as soon as we started walking back to the hostel, and it rained pretty much constantly until we left Airley Beach, three days later! So we spent most of our time in the hostel, although we did venture out for a night out with the people we met on Wings before we all went our separate ways.

The Town of 1770

After arriving into Hervey Bay at midnight, we awoke in the morning to wish Marc a happy 25th birthday! To celebrate, we made a breakfast of croissants and bacon sarnies!

Hervey Bay was only a quick stop over, so after spending the morning on the beach, we hopped onto our next coach to the Town of 1770, named for being the landing place of Captain Cook when he first arrived in Australia in the year 1770.

We spent five days in 1770, the longest time we've spent any place on our whole trip.  It was a small town, with just a few shops and restaurants and the beach five minutes walk from our hostel, so we spent most of the time relaxing on the beach.

On our first night in town, as it was Marc's birthday, we went out for dinner.  In an attempt to relive the culinary delights of Asia, we opted for the local Thai restaurant, which didn't disappoint! It was a 'bring your own booze' restaurant, so we added a distinctly Aussie traveller feel to the occasion by sharing a box of goon!

On our third day in 1770, Steven, Gareth and Marc decided to go for a surf lesson.  We were picked up from the hostel by our instructor; a crazy conspiracy theorist, but a really nice guy and a good surf teacher!  Surfing was so much fun and a lot easier than we expected and we managed to catch some good waves!  On the way home the instructor treated us to a song that he had written about the woman who had her baby eaten by dingoes as well as telling us about his experiences with aliens. Very entertaining.

The evenings were spent drinking goon and one night we met a couple of fellow Brits and went for a drunken stroll on the beach.