The Season far

Its beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!  Mulled wine, snow, cosy nights in... But unfortunately it's only July! 

The Queenstown Winter Festival at the beginning of this month added to the Christmassy feeling. The festival  is to  'Welcoming Winter' and it was so much fun. the first night was filled with fireworks, live music and thousands of  different food stores. Throughout the two weeks there were a lot of events, such as suitcase racing on the mountains and dog races in the snow! There was also a drag queen race that the CEO of NZSki got involved in! It was so hilarious.  Sheep racing was also a lot of fun, it was actually one of the funniest things I have ever seen watching the sheep race and just over obstacles! The poor things! 

Life in Queenstown

Come to Queenstown and enjoy a Fergburger, A money shot cocktail and do the Pog Mahones impossibly hard pub quiz!

Shoulder season is finally over, Wahoo!! And the town is getting busier. Me and Nick have both landed jobs with NZSki so we will be on the mountain most days and have a free lift pass for our days off! I can also get free Snow Boarding lessons so hopefully I will pick it up pretty quick. We have spent quite a bit of money on all our gear so I hope I don't suddenly decide I want to take up ski-ing instead! Nick is in love with his Battaleon Evil twin triple base technology snowboard (I just don't know what any of that means!). And I love my snowboarding boots! They are like moon boots!!

Settling down in Queenstown

 In Queenstown, no matter what direction you look, the view is breathtaking!

We love our new life in Queenstown. The town reminds me of the little village in The Grinch as we are surrounded by mountains and houses on the side of hills, its so cute, I can't wait to see it in the winter when the mountains will be covered in snow. when we first arrived we spent a week in the Southern Laughter hostel, we had a double room and a balcony overlooking Queenstown hill. 

The South Island

Oh look there is another breathtaking  view!

The ferry over from the North Island was wonderful, we sailed through a a few little islands and past a salmon farm! the views where just incredible. Its a bit cold though!

The North Island

Rotorua really does stink... and no you do not get use to it!

After the North of Auckland we headed to the Coromandel Peninsula. We stayed in a little place called Hahei. While there, we went on a lovely walk to Cathedral Cove, which is literally a massive cove, its cool though and there where so many rocks and unique shaped Islands in the sea. It was a bit of a rainy day but it didn't bother us too much. We went to Hot Water Beach where we just dug a hole in the sand and suddenly had our own spa! It was amazing! I was unconvinced it would work as it was a freezing day but sometimes the water in the hole was too hot to even stand in! In fact I burnt my little toe. We had a great time there, especially because Nick did most of the digging!

NZ Far North

It's getting windy up here!

So Jo is an automatic, which is VERY easy driving,  you literally don't have to do anything I don't know how I will ever go back to a manual!

Auckland

 Back to the modern world, we are clean and we have chocolate!

The flight from fiji only took 4 hours! New Zealanders are so lucky that they live so close to that amazing place! In Auckland we are staying in a lovely apartment, with a view over looking the sky tower and the bridge, it is beautiful!

Fiji

Bula!

I am not exaggerating when I say Fiji is Paridise...and I even got a tan!

We stayed on the mainland for our first night in Fiji and when exploring Nadi  we stuck out like a sour thumb being so pale and well.. lost! The locals kept coming up to us to try and help us find our way and sell us there genuine Fiji products. So in the end we caved and ended up trusting a Fijian man as he took us down a back alley, past some dodgy looking police men and up to a shop. We had to take our shoes off before entering and we were the only tourists there. We were taught about the traditions in Fiji and drank Kava at a welcoming ceremony, it tastes a lot like soil but it is rude to refuse! When we thought the ceremony was over, the Fijians started telling us about the history of cannibalism... they even showed us the tools that were used and how they were used.. Me and Nick exchanges glances wondering who would be eaten first, but luckily we were also taught that Fiji stopped eating humans in C17th..*phew*

Los Angeles

I have come to the conclusion there are no celebrities in LA...

The flight from London wasn't too bad, probably because we had our amazing sky couch! was pretty comfy… we were massively jet lagged though, up at 6am on our first day in LA and went exploring!

The Plan

Join me and Nick as we jet off to the other side of the world.

The decision to ditch England and experience new Cultures was made at the end of September 2011. Since then I have worked as a debt collector, a project adviser in BnQ and a Customer Service agent for Thorntons, these were not the most enjoyable jobs! It was all worth it in the end though as now we have saved enough and brought our flights, we are off in approximately 9 days, 16 hours and 10 Minutes!