Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No no no……. It’s the blog! And it’s back with a bang! We have more stories and places to tell you about than ever before and of course further insight in to what it’s like to travel the world with two beautiful women….as well as Soph and Courtney….jokes!

Ok so first I’ll explain exactly what is going on with us and why we haven’t been online as much as we’d like. So as you know we are in New Zealand. It’s a stunning country with scenery we previously thought only possible in our dreams. We’d been told before that we would love the views around New Zealand but never thought it would be this good. No matter what direction you look you are always capturing a view fit for a luxury postcard. Perhaps one of those glossy ones they only keep inside the shop. It really is rather lovely here. Plus the weather has been brilliant. Or as the local Kiwis like to say, ‘Sweet as bro’.

In all the countries we have travelled so far we have done what ever we want, whenever we’ve wanted to do it. We have made our plan of action up as we go, moving from place to place as we please. New Zealand has been very different. Here we bought a ticket for the Kiwi Experience bus. Many of you may of heard of this before, but for those who haven’t it’s pretty much a tour bus that allows you to hop on and off at specific locations throughout both the north and south islands. The driver highlights points of interest along the way as well as stopping off as we travel to our next location so we can get out and go on a mini hike. It’s quite nice as we get to see waterfalls and hidden lakes in the middle of nowhere that we would never have seen were we making our own way around. So yeah, it’s nice.

Each day the driver will send clip boards around the bus for people to sign up to different activities that will be available at our next destination. Stuff like bungy jumps, sky dives etcetera. They will also send a clip board around for accommodation so we are guaranteed a room for when we arrive. So not only do we not have to travel around ourselves, we no longer need to worry about finding somewhere to sleep. All very nice.

All this allows you to make some pretty good friends as you go from place to place all experiencing the same places. I know what you’re thinking. It’s all too nice to be true. Well you’re right, not all is as nice as it seems. We’ve found that the ‘hop on hop off’ tag line the Kiwi Experience uses is more focused at some of the driver’s relationships with their passengers than the actual ability to change your time in any given location. It is so busy this time of year that changing your bus to the next day is way too risky. If you hop off the schedule you originally set, you may never get back on again without having to fight your way through a standby list of over 150 other travellers. Plus many of the drivers are a complete bunch of fishcakes. They are rude, racist, power hungry alcoholics who enjoy nothing more than demanding respect while they go around sleeping with their female passengers. I’ve printed off 25 copies and burnt my CV on to disc. I’m sending it in first thing Monday morning.

So, as there have been so many different places along the way, I shall attempt to sum up our events of each place rather than that of each day. Hopefully it will all go smoothly, but I will be blogging furiously to catch up asap. So expect rapid blog updates.

As all good reads do, we shall start at the beginning. Which in this case happens to be in Auckland. One of the country’s largest cities located in the northern part of the north island. The Kiwi Experience have been doing their thing since the magical year of 1988. And in this time they have managed to build up some significant buying power when it comes to choosing preferred hostels. The majority of these preferred hostels are owned by Base. So almost every place we stop we end up staying at a Base hostel. And Auckland is no different. Yet this hostel was more like a homeless shelter than anything else. Thankfully we would only be there for 2 days before catching our very first green kiwi bus.

Just like most large cities, Auckland is a pretty ugly concrete place. Skyscrapers and angry commuters who are probably going through marital problems, fed up with their miserable lives, perhaps wishing they’d done a little travelling in their youth. It does however have a nice little park in the centre and a rather tall tower like the one we climbed in Sydney. And it would be these two things that our first evening in New Zealand would be revolved around. First, however, Courtney was in for a very special treat. She was going to see her little sister. Doing a little trip of her own, Ziggy (Sigourney, if you’re wondering) had been in the country for a few days but obviously hadn’t seen her big sis since January when Court left England. So what better setting for their reunion than a dirty underground food ‘Court’. Brilliantly linked Ellsy, well done.

Unlike us three, Ziggy can make new friends easier than the only girl in the Sixth Form of an all boys school. People are literally adding her to their Christmas card list with the blink of an eye. And so it was that she had taken to this travelling business like she was born with dreadlocks and a backpack attached to her back. Corinne was her traveling partner for their 5 month trip around the world. Known each other since the beginning of their big school years, the two made a pretty good duo for not only making new friends but also getting from place to place without being kidnapped or injured or whatever else parents worry may happen to their little ones.

So we had dinner and shared a few tales of our trips so far. Good places to go, people we’ve met, how amazing this blog is….you know. General chit chat. We then headed over to the park in the town centre where we would get to experience a Chinese New Year festival with a few Chinese customs that we have all grown to love. You know the types of things; lots of lanterns, people taking selfies of themselves displaying a peace sign with their fingers, large groups cutting in front of your path before stopping for no good reason at all. It was a very interesting festival and a lot of fun walking around. I still don’t fully understand why they had a Chinese New Year festival in March when I’m pretty sure theirs is still January time, but oh well. It was good to see.

To finish the evening off we were treated to a firework show with a difference. The 5 of us found a little patch in the park where we sat down with a clear view of the Auckland Tower, now glowing red in the dark. We waited for a few moments until the display began from the very top of the tower. The show was a really nice treat and it felt like the perfect welcome to a new country. We didn’t manage to go up the tower like we did in Sydney and Kuala Lumpur, but we did get to see fireworks be let off from it. Beautiful stuff.

Ziggy and Corinne were catching their bus the day before us so we wouldn’t see them for a while until we could all meet up in a little town called Rotorua later that week. So after the show we headed back to Base for a few card games and an early night. When it came around to our bus leaving we would have to be down stairs ready at 7:30am to make sure we got a seat. Due to the Kiwi Experience office being about as efficient as an obese air hostess, we had been put on the standby list for our bus to Hot Water Beach. AKA, Stop 1. So we had to hope that at least three of the people booked on the bus had either gone out the night before and got too drunk, or they had found themselves stuck in the middle of a large group of Chinese tourists with their over sized cameras. A deadly mix. And perhaps one that proved too deadly, because when it came to the morning of our departure we got a seat by the skin of our teeth. Courtney only brushes her teeth on alternate days and luckily this was the morning of an unbrushed day. Few!

As I mentioned, Hot Water Beach was our first stop of our Kiwi Experience. A very quiet place with a unique tourist attraction. At low tide the sand starts to feel hot from the geothermal activity going on below the surface. Take a shovel and some swim shorts down when the sea is out and you can build your very own hot spa. Unfortunately for us, low tide wasn’t until 1am. Meh, we ain’t got work in the morning.

We had managed to make our very first friend in the shape of Tommy. Thankfully Tommy was a boy and liked boy things like moving above a snail’s pace and talking about stuff unrelated to their friend’s future weddings. So Tommy and I got on well. Sure, he was about as simple as a concussed sheep, but Tommy was rather good when it came to digging up sand and launching it into the sea. He made us a perfect jacuzzi big enough for the four of us to dip our bums in. It was a mind boggling place. The heat coming through the sand was at times too hot to stand in. With a name like Hot Water Beach, we sort of expected a little warmth to be felt under our feet but nothing like what we got. Google this place if you have a second. A tad mental.

We were only there for a single night before we would have to catch our next bus to Stop 2, Waitomo. However we had just enough time for Tommy and I to learn a few lessons. All of which came when we attempted to cook dinner. It turns out, that in the girls eyes, it’s near on illegal to chop a carrot without peeling it first. I honestly thought they were going to call the authorities when we brought that knife to within an inch of that carrot. I’m sure the police would have had more important things to do with their valuable time than arrest us on suspicion of not peeling a carrot, but just in case, we didn’t have the budget to bail me out in time for our morning bus, so we slowly walked away from vegetable and left the girls to it. A lucky escape.

We also had just enough time to realise Soph had misplaced her mobile. In fact she had left it on the bed back in Auckland, the silly billy. Thankfully we had also made friends with the slightly over eager housekeeper the night before and she had managed to hand it into reception for safe keeping. And the only place in the whole country we would actually be returning to was Auckland. So although she would have to go a month without her phone, she would get it back. Eventually.

So, the Waitomo bus was another early one. We had perhaps managed 4 hours sleep before we had to get up and jump on. We were officially on the list this time though so there would be no need to be extra early. Waitomo, like Hot Water Beach, was a very small town, famous for a very special tourist attraction. This was the home of some of the world’s best glow worm caves and had been on our list of must dos since day dot. A lovely walk in some millennia old caves, staring up at the glow worms like blue stars within arms reach. It sounded perfect and something we simply couldn’t miss out on. Yet there was a twist. We wouldn’t be simply making our way through the caves on foot, we would be sitting in rubber rings as we float along a series of underground rivers, jumping off ledges into pools of deep water. Pretty cool I must say.

However. The water was made of nothing less than liquid nitrogen. It was literally the coldest water ever. A dip in the frozen seas of Saturn’s moon’s would have been a more comfortable experience than this cave. It was really good fun and the glow worms were amazing, plus the guys that took us around the caves were awesome too and really helped you out when you struggled getting through a certain part. Yet we were in there for almost two hours. Any longer and we would have been cryogenically frozen until global warming had enough time to dry out the caves and release us from our icey cells. And if it wasn’t for our simple friend Tommy physically dragging the entire group through the water, we would have been. Another lucky escape.

So that’s that for part 1. My attempt at describing our days in less detail has not gone as hoped. However I’ve had fun writing again and hopefully you’ve enjoyed the read. We have really struggled for free WiFi to post while in New Zealand and even just the time to write. But you’ll be pleased, or at least we hope you will, to hear that WiFi is now a lot more accessible. So expect to hear from us more often.

Oh oh, and if anyone knows the correct way to spell ‘travelling’ (‘traveling’) or ‘travellers’ (‘travelers’) that would be of some help. Google seems to think both are right.

More tomorrow….

Thanks for following x