Hellooooo,

We have neglected this blog for a while, as we have been too busy to sit down! We're in New Zealand, Waitomo to be precise. It's been so good, will give you all a brief run down of the main activities we have done over the last few weeks.

Here goes........

Whitsunday Sailing -

for 3days/2nights we sailed the Whitsunday Islands on the S.V Whitehaven. It was pretty rocky, the wind was up and so almost was our food on several occasions. When we did get off the boat though it was wicked. We visited 2 snorkel sites, Manta Ray Bay was one, we saw some cool coral and big fishes! The Maouri Rass was massive!!!
Whitehaven Beach was really nice, the shallow water is filled with sting rays, where we moured up there were loads of turtles! As you may have noticed, we are enjoying the food, the food on the boat was really good, healthy too.....but we have sunken back into pies for breakfast lol

White Water Rafting -

We were told that the Tully River rafting from Mission Beach is the best in OZ @ NZ and we found out why. It was really good fun, quite hard work, but we need all the exercise we can get! The rapids were up to Grade 4, we had some scary moments. We drifted on our backs down one set of rapids, was funny but the waves are bigger when your not in the raft lol we also got to jump off a big rock into the river, was quality day. Plus a bbq at lunch.

Snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef -

After the Whitsundays we were'nt sure how the great barrier reef could be that much nicer than the barrier reef, but it was, much nicer! Not just the weather, but the water was so clear! The first place we stopped had more coral than the 2nd stop, we saw a few turtles and giant clams and we found Nemo wooho! the 2nd stop was a Upolu Cay, which is a little sand island in the reef, here you could see almost 100m underwater, we saw a Black Tip Reef Shark!!! I went in the water there even after the captain told me there was a resident 3m Tiger Shark in the area!!!

We have got some underwater camera photos of sailing and the reef and hopefully more of the caves tomorrow.

We then had a long journey to NZ, flights from Cairns to Sydney, then Sydney to Auckland, you can see the pics of the great barrier reef from the aeroplane!

Anyway since arriving here we have been to Whatianga, Rotorua and are now in Waitomo. Tomorrow we are going tubing through the caves for a few hours, should be interesting lol

Hope everyone is ok at home, will try and update this a bit more frquently here in NZ, seems alot cheaper and laid back than OZ.

Love

Neil & Tiff