Surf'N'snow Backpackers Auckland

Auckland has lived up to its mediocre expectations and has been our base camp for the past few days. Both of us have purchased smaller backpacks and smaller sleeping bags for the remainder of the adventure. We've both shipped home loads of boxes containing gear that we will not need anymore. From now on, we live out of our 35 liter packs stuffed with the bare essentials. We leave for Nepal in 2 days and could not be more excited. Our travel route to Kathmandu will be posted now as we are not ...

18.51 - New Today was definitely an early day! We, that 3 of us, went to see the sunrise so we were up at 06.00 and it did not feel good I can tell you, especially since we had to walk up a hill to see it! It wasn't even all that good really but I think that was due to all the cloud being in the way. We watched it for about half an hour and then went back to bed! We weren't there for long though as we had to be up at 08.30 this time. Some of the guys went horse riding but me and Becky went bo...

22.08 - All day the weather has been utter *****. It has been windy and raining an boring and yet again I have been confined to surf lodge for pretty much all day except to use the phone half a mile up the road. The night was very cold as yet again I was stupid enough to sleep only in my liner. The guys who I have been travelling with left this morning so I had to say bye to Flo and Becky. Becky and me had a really good long conversation last night before we went to bed and this morning we sw...

OK work this one out we left Santiago on the 15th September on a 13 hr 20 minutes flight to Auckland New Zealand and arrived on the 17th September. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 16TH SEPTEMBER.....we just missed out on a whole day. It was dark from the minute we left Santiago to the minute we arrived in Auckland, strangest flight EVER!!

We had a great few days in Auckland, there is so much to do but it is so so expensive from the minute you get off the plane there is so much tourist information...

lalala

Leaving Nadi's airport was a little sad, but I was so excited to go on to New Zealand. Its kinda cool to have met people in Fiji that just came from NZ. They all had great stories and I could not wait to start mine! Flying to NZ only took about 3 hours. I got off the plane and a little nervous going through customs, I bought a one way ticket and in Fiji I had to buy a phone card so the people at the air port could call NZ to see if I was allowed in the country because I only had a one way tic...

So my first real night out in NZ I met up with a girl form my Hostel Liz and some of her friends, we went to a Mexican restaurant to celebrate. Why? Well when I met Liz she was talking about Fiji and I told her I just came from there and showed her pics. She ended up buying a ticket and is going island hopping, one of the other girls just finished her last day at her job, and it was my first night out. CLELBRATIONS! Which were kicked off with margaritas. Then off to one of the Hostel bars, (g...

I arrived in Auckland 32 hours after I left Louisville, KY. On top of that I had only gotten a total of 12 hours sleep in 3 days before I left. Needless to say, I'm absolutely exhausted! Auckland is a beautiful city, but it's not much different from other big cities. The same trends in dress and the same music are playing on the radio, despite being on the other side of the world. It's amazing really! One thing I love is the mixture of urban and granola. And most of those people are one in t...

Another day, yet another bus. This time the first bus trip was nice and short through some spectacular scenery of a tropical gorge to a car park where we met with another bus to transfer to Waitomo Caves, where we planned to go cave tubing! This led to another 2 rather cramped hours on a much smaller bus, to reach the Waitomo township where we quickly got through the paperwork, then jumped on another bus to drive all of 20 metres to the changing rooms. We were fitted out with thick wetsuits, ...

Sorry to have taken so long. There is no excuse we have just been plain lazy. Continuing... We arrived in Rotorua to sunny skies and geysers galore. Rotorua is famed for the geothermal activity that goes on there and you can't go for a walk in the park without almost stepping in a puddle of bubbling mud. However, this novelty comes at a price as Rotorua is also famed for the egg like odour (which is actually sulphur). We visited the Polynesian Spa which consisted of about five of these hot po...