New Zealand

Māori translation - The Long White cloud

10.10.2007 18 °C

So begins the next portion of the journey, after a brief stop over in LA, managed to spend a day sightseeing in Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard before heading back to the airport for a flight onwards to Auckland.

Everything went a bit weird as we crossed the international date line mid flight and it jumped from being 8 hours behind GMT on the 28th to being 12 hours in front on the 30th September.

It's still in spring here in New Zealand and with temperatures only just about 20 degrees it made for a big shock jumping from hot sunshine for the last 3 months into the cold - (I even had to put my coat on!!!)

The country is a similar size to the UK, but with a very important difference, there are only about 4 million people, I didn't think little villages of a dozen houses and a shop still existed but they do and are everywhere here, (not just in rural out of the way area's).

That's ok though as us tourists are out in force everywhere, 11 million of us each year swamp the country sampling the best of what's on offer!

And exactly what is on offer, to date currently been on a day tour around Auckland seeing a lot of the 63 volcano's that make up the city, walking under the Auckland harbor bridge to watch bungy jumping in high gales, driving along 90 mile Beach which is a magnificent place which runs up to Cape Reinga right at the top of the country, visited the countries historic treaty grounds from 1840's, Headed to the North East and walked through brush to get to the hidden Cathedral Cove, been underground in the Waitomo caves to see thousands of glow worms in their natural habitat, seen fluffy bunny rabbits shorn for their Angora fur (all escaped unharmed) and finally rolled downhill in a giant plastic ball called a Zorb which has all made for a very interesting couple of weeks.

Photo's!!!

Cathedral Cove - It's really me!