Abel Tasman (2)

The scenery shot is the view we got from the top of the hill...it was beautiful! We crossed the river on abridge as part of the walk, but we stopped and paddled for a bit. It was really cold and fast flowing!! Nick filled up his water bottle from there as well, and the water was delicious!

Abel Tasman National Park

This is a national park that we did a walk around..meant to be one of the most beautiful places in NZ! It was pretty, but a lot of time it was under trees so we couldn't see much. The bus journey home was awful...sooo many people absolutely stank. Really really badly. This is the beach where we started the walk - I am trying to write ROZ in sticks. Took me ages cos Nick kept knocking them down!! I managed in the end though.

Helm's deep

This is the mountain where they filmed the battle of Helm's deep in Lord of the Rings...I don't know which film it's in - maybe a Lord of the Rings fan will be able to say.

The South Island!!

Hey guys,

well, now we are on the south island, we are staying in a small town called Picton... the hostel offers free breakfast and chocolate pudding :D and its nice and cheap witha Spa pool, just had a dip in there, its about as hot as the average bath.

Sorry for the lack of new pictures, i took some around Taupo the other day of some really cool carvings, but the library computer im using won't let me post them :( oh well, we can add more another time...

Tmrw we are off to Nelson where we are going to go on a wine tour and go on a hike around abel tasman bay, looking forward to it...

the ferry crossing to south island was fairly uneventful though the scenery was beautiful... roz didn't get sea sick :P... it took 3 hours, and it was boring.

right, nice chatting :P

speak soon

Nick

The Devil's Bathtub

the picture doesn't do this justice, it is almost flurecent green and it stinks :P

Mauri Hangi

Mauri people. They actually do stick their tongues and their eyes out like that - they're imitating the animals of the forest. It looks a bit scary!!

National Park

First is the famous chanpagne pool - it is massive and has all this steam coming out of it!! the edges are all red as well...however all through this park is smelled really bad and was really hot because of all the steam.

Then that is a geyser that erupts every day. Tbh it wasn't as impressive as we were expecting!! It is quite a busy tourist attraction though.

Hot pools and bubbling mud

Heya - right we're really behind in photos so this one was taken about a week ago in Rotorua. This was just in the park - they have all these fenced off areas behind which are all these pools of bubbling mud - and the smell is awful!! Overcooked eggs. Yuck!

12th of february

Hello :D,

well guys today we did white water rafting, which was without a doubt the best thing i have ever done, we did a 7m vertical drop on our inflatable rafts :P that was Awesome!!!! we got completely soaked though...

Last night roz went to a mauri concert called a hangi, hope to post some pictures soon guys

Nick

Rotorua!

well we're here now, and true to its name (sulphur city) it smells quite bad... but you do get used to it after a while... we're staying at this really nice hostel called treks backpackers... it won 5 stars in the hostel rating system :P... a tip for anyone interested... buy a YHA card ($40NZ) they save you about $3 a night, give or take... it doesn't sound like much (thats less than a pound... but it all adds up :P

anyway... its hard to find a computer around here so don't expect really frequent emails :D, i saw a sign for the library but after searching i couldn't find it anywhere...

Tmrw we are going white water rafting... looking foward to it, hopefully we'll get some good pictures too. Roz has gone to a Mauri concert... it sounds like fun but for me it was a choice between that or something like a bungy :P

right ive gtg, im running out of computer credit... i'll write again soon...

Nick

Auckland

Well I have lots more photos that I want to upload, but the computer isn't letting me. I'll tell you about the last few days instead.

We took the magicbus up to Paihia (Pie-here) and went on a boat journey and saw dolphins! We then had the most amazing burgers in the world, and kiwi ice cream, which is my new favourite! We then spent another day dossing about, then we took the 9 hour bus journey around the east coast and back to Auckland - saw some amazing views, including the biggest tree in New Zealand - it was huge! Not overly tall, but really thick. We made some friends during the trip, and went out to a chinese new year festival that evening. We're in Auckland now, and we're off to Rotarua tomorrow, for white water rafting and the steam geysers, where we'll stay for a few days.

lots of love,
Roz

Opononi

This is a view from the bus. It is right at the top of the north island, and there are sand dunes, water and loads of green trees. Its amazing how quickly the landscape changes...

The best burgers in the world!

These burgers cost roughly 2 pounds 90, they were absolutly amazing...

who would have known that beetroot goes really well in a burger :P

the Haruru falls near our first camp site in paihia... really beautiful here. we swam in the lake :)

Dolphin watching!!!

We saw about 40 dolphins and this is the only good picture we got!! It was really difficult to get a photo cos they moved so quickly. We also went through the famous hole in the rock...but none of us had heard of it before :P

the city auckland as seen from the high bridge

LA local wildlife

when taking a walk in the morning you can go stand on the pier, its cool to watch the pelicans dive and catch fish...

this one landed on the pier and was letting ppl get close enough to take really good photos

awesome sunset at venice beach :D

New Zealand!!!!

Hey guys, we're here now, finally in Auckland... god it seemed like LA took forever :P, i guss thats what happens when you see everything interesting (dead tramps aside) in the first few days...

A good tip for anyone interested... in LA we payed a dollar for 10 mins of internet time, it seemed alright at first but began to mount up... here in Auckland if you go to the library you can use it free for up to an hour :D... this is probably the case all over the world... we felt a little stupid when we found this out, oh well.

we're doing a tour of auckland tmrw and then on friday we begin our tour of NZ as a whole, we plan on adding some more pictures soon so stay posted :)

Nick

Hello!

Sorry for screwing you over Bex - but I am impressed I can still do it from LA! We are looking forward to going to NZ tomorrow, everyone says it's gorgeous...but today we're going to McDonalds for a supersize portion, just to say we've done it!!!

Roz