Into my last week in the Pacific and it's busy with lots of hula activities - international hula conference, na hoku hanohano festival, hula classes, dancing to live music in bars in the evening - so I quickly renamed the city Hula-lulu;-) So ami, sway and slide. And when I'm not dancing or devouring ono grinds I'm in the ocean swimming with the fish, eels, honu.... for example at fantastic Hanauma Bay (see photo), where the marine life is so unafraid of humans...

Greetings from the heart of Polynesia, the sacred island of Raiatea, which I will sadly have to leave in a few hours to fly back to Pape'ete and then on to Honolulu and Hilo. It has been a fantastic time in French Polynesia - and nearly seduced me to use French in this blog, too ;-) They have the most adorable accent over here. That and of course the gorgeous food makes me forgetI paid my full fare in blood to all the local moskitos and nonos... Mauruuruu! ......

Kia ora everyone! Arrived back in Auckland today after a 9 hour nonstop trip back up from Wellington in our wee orange Adventure Tour bus. Our excellent driveress Kea had to muster all her patience with our tearful goodbyes on the hilly streets of downtown Auckland - so strange to be leaving our wee tribe behind after living in each others pockets for 23 days, sharing food, drink, pix, digs and lots more in this time. It sure was a great adventure and we saw so...

Another entry yeehaa! Completely lost track of time on this adventure tour round New Zealand. Spent about a week on the beautiful North island and have now arrived in the South island, where the weather is great! Today saw us taking the water taxi to Anchorage bay and then hike for about 4 hrs through the Abel Tasman national park. Fantastic! Now relaxing outside our cabin at the local camping and using the WiFi. But methinks it could be time to slap on some...

Bloody typical, the Brits cannot de-ice their planes at Heathrow, so I am stranded in Hong Kong for the night at the Panda hotel, which is absolutely full of pandas in every shape or form except live ones of course. Hopefully the flight to Auckland will leave on time so I can join the 'All of New Zealand' tour straight off the longhaul flight....