Our Day in Agnes Waters!!

Hey guys,

this is what we did yesterday :D we went surfing for 3 hours in the morning, it was brilliant!! we both managed to stand up on the boards by the end of the session... took me a while though, turns out i was holding the board to high when trying to jump on :P

later that afternoon we went on a bike tour it was the best thing we have done on our entire trip... we got to drive the bikes (they were automatic not manual) round the area... it was called a scooterroo tour, the aim is to find kangaroos and take photos...

we stopped on the beach at 1770 and watched the sun set eating crisps and drinking some coke :D, we were meant to get wedges with sour cream and chili sauce, but the pub serving it was closed :( oh well... so the guys leading the tour brought in the emegency rations of coke and crisps, they were really nice, especially as we didn't actually pay for that...

the bikes could go up to about 90kmph or faster when going down hill :D

it was great, i would highly recommend it to anyone who happens to be passing through Agnes Waters!!

Nick

Crocodiles!!

We went to a croc farm the other day, and saw some huuuge crocs!! The croc in the picture with the man weighs 830kg and is 5.5m long. Really quite scarily big! They breed them to use for meat and leather - and crocodile meat is surprisingly nice! Apparently crocs can grow to weigh up to 2 tonnes and can slow their heart rates down to two beats a minute and the saltwater crocs (i.e. these ones) are the man-eaters. I don't think any of the croc we saw were man-eaters, but couldn't be sure! They had definitely eaten other crocs, usually females that had been sent in to mate with them. Once, a female attacked a male (which was a mistake) as he bit her tail off whilst tourists were watching! Wish I could have seen that! Did you know, they can cure themselves from HIV? . Pretty impressive!! The little one we're holding was really cute, it felt quite cool and soft - I can see why people have them as pets when they're little...when they grow bigger it's a different story though! They can also jump over fences (and there was just a fence between us and them) and they have bones in their skin. Umm, that's about all I can remember!!!

Roz

Some people shots

The first picture is of some of the people on the boat with us - we all went out for drinks the night we got back. The last night on the boat there was the most beautiful sunset, and we got some quite artsy ones with silhouettes.

Eagerly awaited...photos of the whitsundays!

We spent two days and two night aboard a 28 ppl yacht cruising round the whitsunday islands. It was a racing yacht and therefore we sailed quite a bit, tipping quite far over in the process! Good fun though. The food was really good, and there was tons of it, and we spent both evening on the deck drinking goon (a really cheap boxed wine) and playing drinking games. I didn't sleep very well cos it was soo hot in the cabin - you could sleep on the deck if you wanted but you had to wear a jumper etc cos it got a bit cold, and I couldn't be bothered. The 2nd night, nick was asleep in his bunk with a full, open bottle of water balanced on his chest - as I had had a bit to drink my coordination wasn't great so I managed to spill it all over him!! He wasn't impressed, and made me sleep on the wet patch :(

We also went snorkelling (this area was still the great barrier reef) but visibility wasn't great and you didn't see the variety we had seen before in Cairns. Still good though! All in all, we had a really good time.

The bird in the first photo is a sea eagle that was circling our boat - a crew member kept throwing fish to it and he had a special whistle that called them over.

The last photos are of Whitehaven beach - the 6th most beautiful beach in the world. It rained. The sand is special in that it is made of silicone and therefore no matter how hot it gets outside, the sand is always really cool. We wore stinger suits to go swimming because of a deadly jellyfish present in the water - it is completely transparent and about the size of your little fingernail. Note that the stinger suits don't cover your hands, feet or head...I became paranoid that I'd been stung on the toe (the sting apparently feels like a hair being pulled and isn't that noticeable) - but I hadn't. The water was really clear and we saw three stingrays swimming really close to us as well.

Beach pics!!

More Wildlife Pics!!

these are 2 cool parrots that we saw as we were walking beside the beach today!

beach pics to come in next post :P

Cape Tribulation

We went to the rainforest yesterday! Saw some spiders and rainforest dragons and crocodiles! We were on a river where a huge (4.5m) croc lives...a few weeks ago he ate a cow. Also, about a month ago a little boy was eaten by a crocodile in that same stretch, and a few weeks before that an old man was eaten! The only ones we saw were little though...only about 1m. We also saw a huge lizard on the road - about 2m long, and lots of warning signs for a killer bird. Fun fun!!

Great Barrier Reef Part 2

More photos...

Great Barrier Reef!

Well today we went on a boat trip to the great barrier reef!! It was truly amazing - we went snorkelling and scuba diving. The water wasn't as clear as Tobago, but it was still really good. Nick especially enjoyed his first scuba dive, although he did contract a nosebleed afterwards...We saw 3 sea turtles, loads of different fish, a giant clam, and sadly no sharks - I really wanted to see one! We hired a special underwater camera for the day, so we've got some good pictures.

Our Favourite Pastime!!!

The game of spades... we spent hours playing this 4 player game with our friends Steph and Blake, you play in teams of two and its very strategic... anyway the teams were Steph and Roz vs Blake and me. We were so competitve, but in the end the boys reign supreme winning 5 games out of 8.

A favourite snack to accompany this game was the crunchie.

Nick

Round rocks

The first photo is (I think) really good - but then I did take it!! Contrast it to the one Nick took of me...you can barely make out who the person is!!
Other than that, these are some really cool rocks which are incredibly spherical - apparently they were formed in a similar way to pearls, taking about 4 million years to get to the shape they are now.

Roz

Some Awesome Views... Enjoy!

Skydiving!

Yes, we went skydiving! Jumped out of a plane (attached to an instructor) at 9000 feet - above the clouds - with 25 seconds of freefall and parachuting down! It was amazing! Unfortunately we don't have any photos (it cost about 80 quid to get a photographer to jumpout the plane with you) but it was an amazing experience. My instructor did all of these fancy twirls as well going down.

In Dunedin at the moment - the only place in NZ to sell fresh haggis! Def be checking that out! :S

xxxxxxxxxxxx

My New Favourite T-shirt

Hot Spa

After the glacier hike, the four of us went to a hot outdoor spa. It was drizzling, which was quite nice when the water was 40 degrees! We then went out for dinner and made pancakes, cos it was pancake day! We invited Amy and Sara (two americans) over to experience proper english pancakes with lemon and sugar. They preferred ours! Score!

The Glacier Hike (Franz Josef)

This is the Franz Josef glacier, its 12km long and was great fun to climb, we climbed it with some friends of ours (Juma and Becky) and made some new ones along the way. We had to wear crampons to climb, it was really fun, but the boots rubbed Roz's feet. :D

The Awesome Carvings In Taupo

Mangrove Trees

Yes thats right, its a tree growing underwater :P