flashback!

Take a look at the Punakiki Blowholes... they really blew... in a good way...



We're off to the Catlins this week and then to Queenstown... to pick up my dad!! Hooray!!

a look back...

Here's some footage from Arthur's Pass... enjoy!

and we're back in the game!

We got the Dell back... so hold onto your horses because it's time for updates! Well, let's see. We left you at Arthur's Pass with our Avalanche Peak hike... from there we went to the cute coastal town of Akaroa. It's the only French colony left and it's adorable! There must be something in the water because the roses bloom like nothing else and it's gorgeous. Josh and I decided to treat ourselves to a little B&B with homemade breakfast that was just too wonderful to pass up. The other nights we stayed in this little hostel cottage with beautiful roses and flowers, a fountain and hammock in the backyard, and the scent of jasmine all around. Just wonderful.

For most of the time we just relaxed. It was wonderful. We strolled into town, walked to and fro, and just took our time. Just lovely. On one of the last days we decided to go swimming with dolphins - the hector dolphins. They're the smallest (only 5 feet long) and rarest dolphins in the world so that was a fun way to end our time there...

Since then we've picked up our friend Emilee and have made our way through the city of Christchurch and are now in Dunedin. Today we made it to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory and Speights Brewery and made ourselves a Thanksgiving feast - chicken, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and stuffing. Not my dad's world famous stuffing, but it will do. We'll be back tracking with fun videos and pictures since we've missed you the past couple weeks... so keep checking in for a look back at the past couple of weeks... Happy Thanksgiving!!

much to catch up on...

So we are still alive... and still computer-less, so I have much to catch you up on since our Abel Tasman kayaking trip... I will be short but sweet... here we go.

We traveled SW of AT to this town called Westport... not much there but a microbrewery and a big seal colony... we stopped by both of course. That night we stayed at a 100% eco house - meaning, it was all solar powered, had its own rain water catchment, and composting galore. It was pretty sweet... although no TV so what's up with that?? :)


The next day we traveled down to Punakiki - pancake rocks - to watch the blow holes. There are all these crazy rocks that look like stacks of pancakes with all these little caves and grooves in them - so when it's high tide and the water crashes in the water sprays up through the holes and people get soaked -- pretty cool... we ended the night in Greymouth at a rockin hostel...

Greymouth didn't have much to it aside from a pretty well known NZ brewery - Monteiths. Josh and Dominic did the factory tour (which only has 11 full time employees believe it or not) and brought back their favorites. And now I have an announcement - I have officially tasted the first beer that I've liked! Hooray! It's Monteith's Radler and it basically tastes like lemonade. Yum! Josh and Dominic finished their evening with a titillating game of chess... Josh is proud to tell you he defeated the Brit.

That brings us to today... Josh and I said goodbye to our British friend in Greymouth and have moved East through the mountains to a little town (population 60) of Arthur's Pass. We're in waiting to make it to Christchurch to pick up our friend Emilee who is coming in for a visit, so we decided to get some good camping and hiking in beforehand. Today we made the strenuous climb up to Avalanche Peak - an 8 hour round trip that takes you 1000 meters above Arthur's Pass... And let me tell you - it's freaking HARD! But we made it and were able to play in snow for a little bit... go figure. We'll bum around here for a few more days before making our way to Christchurch... until then!

abel tas-mania!

So the dell is still down, but lucky for you google has pictures of just about everything so I can somewhat show you what we've been up to the past couple days...

Josh, Dominic, and I set off on a 3 day, 2 night kayaking trip along the Abel Tasman coast. The Abel Tasman has golden sand, bright turquise/blue waters, and beautiful green coastine... when it's sunny anyway. And lucky for us, it was sunny THE ENTIRE TIME. I was in my swimsuit for most of it. Hot hot hot weather and perfect calm kayaking waters. A dream. It was a great change from walking miles and miles with a backpack on... a couple highlights --

We saw an octopus! We stopped at these one arches and happened to see in the tidepools an octopus chasing after crabs - pretty neat.

Josh and Dominic were able to pick and cook their own mussels straight from the beach. We even brought about 5 or so pounds back home and cooked up a little feast for ourselves... I even had a few so you know they MUST have been good!!

Great weather, beautiful conditions, and a really great time. Couldn't beat it... not sure where we're off to next, but we'll keep you posted... dell or no dell.

down with dell!

So our laptop is broken... again... and it's only 4 months old. Granted, that's like 20 years old in people years, but still... come on Dell. SO, while we're waiting for that to be fixed, I'm sorry to say there will be no flip footage (I know I know... Josh is just as devistated if not more...) or photos. But I will have you all know we are safe and sound and in Wellington. Which is far better than Auckland by the way... still a city, but smaller and more San Francisco like. I really enjoy it. We're staying in a hostel that is colored like a zebra. Yep. Black and White stripes all over it and it's 5 stories tall -- so that's a lot of zebra. I would show you, but you can blame Dell for the photoless post.
ANYWAY - we're off to the south island tomorrow via a ferry and then doing a 3 day kayaking trip around the Abel Tasman National Park area with our British friend Dominic (that we met at the Pinnacles earlier on the trip)... more to come... and thank you for your patience...

first great walk...

So Josh and I just got back to civilization after a 42kilometer (25 mile-ish) hike around Lake Waikaremoana. It's one of a couple "great walks" in NZ that we'll be doing... and we found out that it's the ghetto one. Most great walks provide campsites or huts every couple miles or so for the traveler to stop and stay the night - so does this one, but this one came without the bare essentials - toilet paper and gas burners. LUCKILY we found this out before setting off for the great unknown -- otherwise we would have been at our worsts - Josh without tp and me without food. NOT a good combo. Anyway - we were prepared.

Day 1 - the big hike. This one was like 9kms and all uphill... butt workout to the max. But we made it and settled in for an early night.

Day 2 - the long day. This one was about 18kms and up and down and up and down. Definitely the longest day. We ended the day camping with a beautiful view from our tent... just gorgeous.

Day 3 - the 'get 'er done' day. This one was about 10km and quite muddy. My new boots got the job done but also gave me a ginormous blister (boo!). Day ended in the old ghetto hut with possums tap dancing on our roof all night long. Josh went to throw rocks at them around 2am...

Day 4 - the end. We did the final 4 or so kms to the boat pick up place.

Here's our LONG video... I keep telling Josh, you're going to lose fans if you don't edit, but hey - it's 4 days of documenting so you gotta give the guy credit :) Watch what you can and buzz through what you want to -- Josh would say he's darn funny so watch it all, but that's your call. Enjoy!

just passin on through...

Our journey has begun from Auckland... a 7 hour drive, 2 tanks of petrol, and 1 speeding ticket later (all Josh...) we made it to Gisborne (pronounced Giz-bin) for one night of camping. All worth it just for the sunset... and the journey begins.

last day... sad day...

Sam was leaving on Sunday, but luckily her flight wasn't until 10:45PM -- so we had the whole day. We made our way up to Puhoi for some cheese shopping and Devonshire Tea... yes, that may sound familiar since it was Josh and my THIRD time going to Puhoi for this damn tea. We just can't get it off our minds!! It's too good... and now we have an outside opinion to justify our cravings for those scones... Sam is officially a fan. It was the definition of a lovely morning...



From there we hit up Victoria Market (tourist shopping central) for Sam's souvenirs, then to Auckland Domain and Museum for lunchtime. We ate on our cheese and crackers while overlooking the city.


We played in the Museum for a little bit and then headed back to Mission Bay for the afternoon. We sat and soaked up the sun until the last possible moment and then headed towards the dreaded airport. Of course in true Audrey style, tears were shed, but this week will be looked back upon like the highlights reel on ESPN - all the best of the best moments lumped into one week of time.

and you thought skydiving was risky

On Saturday we took off for Waihiki Island... it's a 45 minute ferry away from Auckland and has wineries and beautiful beaches. The plan was originally to rent bikes and bike from winery to winery but we got a head's up that the island was quite hilly and it would be quite the workout to bike it all... so we opted for scooters. Oh man. Let's just say that Sam came closer to death by scooter than jumping out of a plane. Now, we love Sam, but balancing isn't her forte... and that may have caused her to almost scoot into 80 km per hour traffic... but alas, we made it through. Why we thought wine and scooters would be a good idea, no one will know, but it turned out that we ended up tasting more olive oil than wine on the trip so it all worked out.

It's a beautiful island with wonderful views and vineyards - although probably the most stressful winetasting we've ever done, it was still a fun and memorable experience.

We ended the night by doing some rockin t-shirt shopping back in Auckland - cool, local, not touristy NZ t-shirts here we come!

to the doc we go

Old Cleo's brakes aren't sounding so good so we took her to the mechanic... he said she'll be good as new for the beginning of our roadtrip... which, by the way... starts TOMORROW! Road trip! Wooo!!

better the second time around.

As you faithful readers know, we've already been to the Coromandel but it was awful weather. Luckily, Sam wanted to see what this Coromandel thing had to offer and boy are we glad she did! We actually saw the mountains this time! We actually saw blue water instead of grey mucky water! We saw a totally different side of the Coromandel and it was so fun to experience it with Sam!

First stop after Mount Manganui - Cathedral Cove. We had some time to kill until low tide, so we made the hike down to Cathedral Cove. Definitely better the second time around. We took fun photos and played around in the hot "summer" sun for a bit before heading back out.

Then onto Hot Water Beach. HWB is a strip of beach land that has hot thermal magma flowing beneath the sand. People go out during low tide and dig their own hotpool and hang out in the sun. We hired (kiwi for rented) a shovel and dug our hole (and by "we" I mean Josh...) and hot water started bubbling up from under the sand... pretty incredible. We spent our afternoon in our own private hotpool right on the ocean. VIP.

We ended our time with a drive on the backroads down to Thames for Indian food and then back to the Auckland area for the night. A lot of driving, but who cares when you have DJ Sam mixing up the tunes and beautiful scenery the whole way?? A great day!

falling out of taupo

Forgot to mention - on our way out of Taupo we stopped at the Huka Falls... they're kinda like horizontal waterfalls to be honest, but still gorgeous...

awww... :)

looking back while on the mount...

After skydiving we were on Cloud 9... our step was a little faster and had a little bounce to it, our faces had a permanent smile, and we were ready to take on the world... so we couldn't just sit and relax in Taupo - we had to move on. We took off for Tauranga (gateway to the Coromandel if you will...) so we could hit up Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach the next day.

Tauranga was an experience... to say the least. We made it there and checked into our hostel. Overall, hostels in New Zealand have turned out to be really nice and can be funky little gems for the most part. This hostel, however, would definitely be considered a high risk activity. We checked into our dorm room (note to self, ALWAYS get a room that you don't have to share) and made our way down to a free wireless internet cafe... score... or not... it's a coffee shop by day and apparently a strip club by night... yep. Our internet time was cut a bit short. We went back to our sketchy hostel for a good night's sleep... only to be woken up at 3:30AM by a police officer asking for our passports because there was an armed gunman on the loose in the streets of Tauranga and they had reason to believe he broke into our hostel. Umm... yikes. Needless to say, it was an adventure, but Tauranga wasn't all bad - in the morning we headed to Mount Manganui... it's a dormant volcano with incredible views from the top. And on this sunny day, it was the perfect place to recap our death defying adventures...

cave images...

Here are a couple from the caves... Sam and Audrey's pictures came on a faulty disc, so these are all we have right now, but more to come... I KNOW you want to see this hotness in a wetsuit... oh yeah...