Harbour View Homestay Nelson

... it, this was the day we would do a skydive!!! (By the way, the night before we had spent another fun night looking for a DOC campsite - again we didn’t find it and again the orange petrol light was burning furiously - will we ever learn?!)

Full of nerves we drove down to the airport where ‘Skydive Taupo’ are situated. The whole thing was over before you could say ‘skydive’ - and memories are pretty vague due to all the adrenalin etc ...

... forward to visiting Samoa as we have heard loads of good stuff from other travellers. But first we have to get our heads round the fact that we will be crossing the dateline tomorrow. We leave Wednesday 22nd and arrive Tuesday 21st. So all of a sudden we are not 12 hours a head of you back home but 12 hours behind you. Crazy stuff! Anyway, that's it from NZ and us. Looking forward to telling you all about our Samoan adventure. XX L&M

... get dropped off along the route and picked up further down the route again. Guess what we opted for ;) The path/route that we took was very cozy, being so surrounded by a jungle on all sides, and it did take us slightly more than the indicated time, BUT as you can see, we took MANY pictures this day. A lot of the time we were surrounded by the jungle on all sides, but then when we surfaced onto the hill-tops or near the beaches we were always greeted ...

... with dozens of picnic areas and many access points through the protected dunes to the white sandy beach that surrounds it. There are no buildings other than the odd toilet block and they close the gates at sunset. Although the picnic spots were clearly very popular with the locals, there is so much space that it was easy to find a quiet spot on the beach with no one else ...

... This particular Top 10 Holiday Park was also very popular with families with children and it was fun to see them coming out of their tents/vans at the first sunrays on their bikes, going to the pool, the trampoline or just walking around in loud groups; not to mention that the only channel permitted in the TV room was Disney. Since the internet cable was also in the TV room, by the end of our stay we were more than familiar with ...

... the TV lounge! We are doing nothing tomorrow apart from the massage, and i sleep in til 11.30!! So happy! The massage is amazing and i can actually go up and down stairs afterwards, my calfs are still pulling slightly, but i am not in pain anymore!

... our way up the coast to our starting point at the Northernmost tip of the park (we were to kayak back down to Marahau over 3 days), the waves got bigger and bigger until we were like a cork in a bath tub, riding huge ways then smacking down hard before the next one. As one of our group, Rachael, was throwing up out the back of the boat, Josh gave us the option to abandon the first 5 km or so of the trip and start off slightly further down where the bays were a ...

... of when we were taking a taxi and the door fell off as we were speeding down an old dirt road. haha. But it did the trick...it got us from Picton to Nelson with no problems. The last half-hour of the drive was really neat. It reminded me of driving to Tofino in B.C. It was one of the windiest and curviest roads I've ever been on. A constant zig-zag on the edge of a mountain going downhill in this little naked bus! haha. But the last part of the ...

... neither of those things in Porto Heli!) However, can't spend all day sitting round, and there were two definite highlights - mussel collecting and kayaking. The green lipped mussel is unique to NZ, and we were treated to an educational trip in the hostel water taxi to collect 20kg of them for a big feed up. The farm appears to be a row of floats, but beneath are ropes where baby mussels are seeded on to fluffy rope and held in place by an ...

... geval wel tot Queenstown met mij meerijden en de kosten met mij delen. Leuk en gezellig!!

In de ochtend ontdekte ik dat 1 van mijn favouriete linnen broeken het na mijn fietstochtje van gister, nu toch echt begeven had. Vandaag was het dus tijd om te winkelen!! Enthousiast trokken ik en Erika de stad in, want het is hier zomeruitverkoop!! Een nieuwe broek en vest
voor mij en een nieuwe pyama en een omgeboekt vliegticket voor Erika.
Ook zijn we even een outdoor-zaak ...