Quality Hotel Plymouth Intl New Plymouth

... parts of the trail that have you walking through what seems to be a tunnel through trees. From what we read, many of these trees are podocarps, which is an ancient variety from Gondwanaland. That's the name for when Australia, NZ, South America were joined together. <br>The maps mark some of this walk as the Goblin Forest and as the day got later and the sun was dropping it became easier to see why. The endangered Kiwi bird is quite a symbol to this ...

... fit, its 1500 meters high just to the snow.. Glad i bought that hat n gloves now!! Also he wants to hire a car at weekends and visit the caves etc a couple of hours away, so going to try and make the most of it. Looks like a nice place here, only seen woolworths the supermarket sofar which was a good 20 mins workout away with shopping! ouch... Town is about 45 mins walk, so ill be getting fit! I have a nz number now by the way, so use this to call/txt me now. 0064226284035 xxx

surf highway 45 -Surf highway 45 follows oodles of surf beaches around the west coast circumnavigating the dormant volcano Mt Taranaki - which we climbed up. Surfed at Opunake and Fitzroy beach, camping at the famous Stent Road - so famous the street sigh is a rock as people kept stealing the sign!! Followed forgotton highway 43 back inland

... she barely touched the ground the entire time! haha. She had reason though because Jeff told us about the local Great White that's been seen in the area! Surfing went okay....it's a lot of fun! We didn't manage to stand up but we did get to catch a lot of waves and just body-surf them! There's also a dormant volcano in Jeff's neck of the woods. It's expected to erupt within the next 50 years so don't quite ...

... the kiwi, although sadly not in the wild, I hit the road again and headed further south, stopping when I saw a sign for a brewey. White Cliffs Brewery is a small organic place which brews just two beers - a lager and an English ale. The owner was very friendly and I had a nice chat with him about the history of the place and where they are taking the branding etc in the future - they have big plans. I finally hit New Plymouth in the ...

... the camping things etc, so planned to look for another cheap car while we were up in New Plymouth. The guy at the garage kindly let us leave the car in there where it was nice and secure, so we felt much happier about leaving it. So we hopped on the bus to New Plymouth and it was actually really nice to let someone else worry about directions etc for once! Decided that we'd have to forget about our stupid car otherwise it ...

Wow, what a great trip we are having so far!! We arrived at O'Hare around 3pm on Sunday, February 17th. We were delayed for a few hours, but did make it to San Francisco in time for our connecting flight. After a few hours layover, we took off on our 15 hour flight to Sydney. It was gorgeous watching the moon throughout the night as we were flying half way across the globe. We arrived in Sydney at 7:30am on ...

... started &amp; the schools have recently implemented uniforms for the students. The uniforms seemed awkward to me - too casual &amp; lax, I guess. Sandals, 3-quarter pants &amp; long-sleeved shirt (dull brown colour) for guys &amp; girls wear blouse with pleated skirt. Sandals?! I suppose it's very different from Malaysia. There's also the Festival of Lights held at the Pukekura Park every night till Mac with music, concert in the evenings (7.30pm onwards). Wanted to ...

... where we got our first real look at Mt Taranaki (Mt Egmont). This 2518m volcano which last blew 350 years ago and although currently dormant experts recogn it is long overdue for another explosion, it allegedly the wettest place in NZ. Mt Taranaki is one of the most sacred places in NZ to the Maouri people who used in the past as both a burial ground for Maori chiefs and as a place to hide out in times of danger. Legend has it that Mt Taranaki used to be part of the ...

... I trekked down to the base of the falls where I was afforded a very lovely view of the powerful water. One thing that bothers me about climbing down all these steps to the base of falls is the fact that there is usually just one route both up and down, which means I had to climb the steeps steps all the way back up again. Grrr. As I reached my car I saw two girls had pulled in behind me with smoke billowing out from under their bonnet - after ...