Our Mexican Christmas was different from a usual Christmas Day but it was really good fun anyway! On Christmas Eve, our hostel had a huge buffet with loads of food and some free drinks for everyone, which kicked off the festivities. Before the buffet, four of us went on a hunt for Santa hats, only to discover that you couldn't buy them ANYWHERE in Playa del Carmen... we even tried buying them from a shop which had them on their mannequins! Eventually we begged some staff in an ice cream shop for theirs and they gave in! So that gave us a bit of festive spirit! On Christmas morning, we went to a nice restaurant on the beach front with Emma (our English friend we met in Palenque) and a couple of Aussie guys and had a fancy breakfast, before spending the entire day sunbathing on the beach and drinking 'Santa Cider' (in a champagne bottle)! Emma, Chris and I went out for dinner in the evening, and splashed out since it was Christmas Day - I ordered a steak which was cooked infront of me by our waiter! Yum yum yum! We then went to a club called Coco Bongo, which is like a club and show combined - loads of acts and performances, as well as an open bar... Dangerous!

Our last couple of days in Mexico were pretty uneventful, and after another drunken night in Cancun we flew to San Francisco on the 28th of December. On our first full day in San Francisco, we met up with Allan, a friend from home who happened to be there at the same time as us! We met him in Haight, which is a totally hippy district, full of lots of strange people, but very friendly strange people! We wandered around some shops and then headed to Castro, the gay area, where we went to a bar and had a couple of drinks before going for Indian for dinner. We then went to Castro Theatre, a beautiful old theatre that has been converted into a cinema, to see 'Nine', which was pretty good.

The next day we went on a bit of a shopping spree (we got VERY excited at the prospect of new clothes after living in the same tatty ones for the last 4 months) and had a really good lunch in Chinatown. That night, our hostel provided a free dinner, which, much to our disappointment, was tacos... after one month of Mexican food, I never want to see a tortilla again! We sat and had a couple of beers with Michelle and Jacinta, two Irish girls we'd met at the airport when we arrived, and decided to do a roadtrip together to LA!

The next day was New Year's Eve, and we were up early to go to Alcatraz, the old high-security prison on an island 1km away from San Francisco. It was a really interesting trip - we wandered round the cellhouse with an audio tour, which was narrated by ex-prison officers and ex-prisoners which gave a much better idea of what the prison was really like. We then went to the gift shop and met an ex-prisoner, who had written a book about his time in Alcatraz and was doing book signings! We were a bit scared of him, but he was about 75 and we were reassured to find out he'd been in for bank robbery and not murder...! Once we were back on the mainland, we wandered around Fisherman's Wharf and had lunch at Pier 39, which is ridiculously touristy. On our way back to the hostel, we walked up (a BIG hill) to Lombard Street, the "crookedest street", which was a bit of a waste of time as it's just a pointlessy windy street! We did get some good views of the city though and it was nice to walk around and see more of it. After a nap, we got ready, went for pizza with some people from our hostel and then played drinking games in the hostel until around 11pm. Because everyone was travelling and didn't have much money, we decided to go to the free fireworks show by the Bay Bridge at midnight. The fireworks were amazing! We then just went back to the hostel and kept drinking and partying there. It was a really good New Year's Eve, because usually it's too hyped up and everyone is doing different things, so this was nice and relaxed!

On New Year's Day, we really didn't do much. After a big, hungover breakfast and a post-breakfast nap (!!), we went to see Sherlock Holmes at the cinema which was good, before going back to the hostel for another free dinner and then had a couple of beers with the girls and played some card games. On the 2nd, we got up early to finally go and see the Golden Gate bridge with Allan and Rob. It was quite foggy whilst we were walking towards it, but as we got closer to it it cleared up and it was pretty spectacular. We got the obligatory photos infront of it, before saying bye to Allan and Rob, and then heading to pick up our hire car (who we named Roxy) that we were driving to LA. After a bit of confusion, such as how to move the stick (it was my first experience of driving an automatic) and how to get the key out of the ignition (this was a tricky push down maneuver!) I managed to work out how to work the car and we set off with Michelle and Jacinta on our roadtrip to LA! The drive was surprisingly fine, I adapted quite quickly to driving on the wrong side of the road but I think it's partly because for the past 4 months we'd been in countries which drive on the right-hand side so I'd gotten used to it. We also managed to not get lost too many times, probably thanks to Hank, our sat nav! Michelle drove part of the way on the highway, but she wasn't very confident so I did the majority of the driving. We had another stupid girl moment at the petrol station when we realised we couldn't open the petrol cap and we didn't know if it was petrol or diesel... thankfully we batted our eyelashes and got help! It took about 8 hours to get to LA, so when we arrived at our hostel I was shattered and went straight to bed.

We were up early the next day to go to Universal Studios Hollywood, which was a really good day! We went on a studio tour, which took us round various movie sets, as well as Wisteria Lane, the street Desperate Housewives is set on, which I got very excited about! We went on almost every ride and saw lots of shows as well, including a special effects one in which Chris volunteered and had to do some silly things on stage which was funny! After the theme park, we went to Hollywood Boulevard to look at all the stars on the ground on the Walk of Fame - there were soo many! Hollywood Boulevard was very tacky/touristy, but it was good fun. We then had pizza in a dingy little typical American pizza place before going back to the hostel to bed! The next day, after a massive all-you-can-eat lunch, we went and saw the Hollywood sign before buying a map called 'Movie Star Homes' which had all the addresses of the celebrities who live in Hollywood! We soon realised that you couldn't actually see any of their houses, just the fancy gates, but we drove around for a while admiring all the beautiful houses that we could see and the amazing cars! I could definitely live in Beverly Hills! We then said goodbye to Michelle and Jacinta at the hostel before driving Roxy to the airport and getting on our flight to Fiji.

As soon as we stepped off the plane in Fiji we were hit with a wave of heat - it was 5am and already ROASTING! We were in Fiji for 12 days and pretty much did absolutely nothing... We went island hopping for 9 days, and there really is no way to describe Fiji other than as paradise. It was beautiful, and we basically spent 9 days lying on the beach, swinging in hammocks and going snorkelling... it's a hard life! The snorkelling was amazing, it was just like swimming in an aquarium - there were soo many different types of fish and the coral was incredible. One day, we went snorkelling with reef sharks, which I was scared about at first but they're pretty small and very friendly, they didn't care at all that we were there. We also went on the most unsuccessful fishing trip ever, on which, out of 11 people, only one person caught anything. I got stuck for 20 minutes and managed to catch some coral, haha! When we were on the islands, we got given set meals, so we ate a lot of fish and rice but the food was generally good. Every night we also got entertainment by the locals, which usually involved some sort of dance or game, and was always a good laugh. We got a fire show a couple of times which was really good. It was a great 12 days to just chill out and do absolutely nothing, as well as catching some rays, but we were very excited to fly to New Zealand.

We are currently in Auckland, but getting a bit bored of it because we are just hanging around waiting for our bank cards to arrive. We've decided to head down to Wellington to try and find a job there, so will be going as soon as our cards arrive. We've been organised and set up bank accounts, applied for tax numbers and got NZ sim cards, but we've also been hanging out with our friend Ian, from our South America trip, who is staying in Auckland with his brother for 2 months, which has been great. Yesterday we went on a trip with our hostel to Piha beach, about an hour from Auckland City, to watch the Quiksilver Junior World Surf Championships, which was really cool - the waves were MASSIVE and some of the kids were 13 or 14, it was really impressive. Off to the Bay of Islands in a couple of days to see some of the most Northern part of NZ before heading down to Wellington, where the job hunt begins!