Today we woke up early (7am!), showered, and then it was time to phone / text home to deliver the big news! We used the payphone on site and Dave phoned home while I text my mam and dad, Dawn, Lee, Amanda, Emma and Chris! Straight away the congratulatory texts started arriving and the Parsons' all sounded pleased on the phone! We ate our breakast, standing next to the van then packed up and headed into Auckland. We'd read about a road in Parnell that has free wi...

Today our alarm went off at 5:30am - as usual, we woke up 10 minutes before! Our first problem of the day was getting out of the hostel - noone was on the desk, front door was locked and alarmed, taxi driver wating outside looking in at us looking at him! Eventually he gestured to Laura to answer the phone on the desk, he rang it and told her to go upstairs and wake up the owner to let us out! The owner didn't seem to mind and was actually quite apologetic about ...

Today it was finally time to wave goodbye to Octopus after 12 amazing days in paradise. We got up early for breakfast and to finish packing. 10am was checkout time, and because of all of our drinks and trips went on a tab, we were a bit worried about how big our bill would be (although I've tried to keep count!). It ended up being roughly what I thought, so no nasty shocks! The rain poured down all day morning and into the afternoon, and we prepared ourselves fo...

As today was our last day :( we decided to make the most of the sun before we get to cold New Zealand. We spent all morning by the pool then at lunch we had a nice chat with an American couple and an English couple who had spent 6 weeks in NZ and reckon they saw it all so 3 months will be too long for us (we don't think so! This came from the guy who says he goes to America every year and spends £1-2k on clothes as they're so cheap...). In the afternoon we sat ...

Today we spent another lazy day relaxing by the pool, making the most of the sun while we can! After lunch we went snorkelling, now that the Ocean had calmed down a bit. The highlight of the snorkelling was seeing the massive school of yellow and black striped fish feeding on the coral, while a bigger multicoloured fish swam into them to try and make them go away! It was amazing to watch. After that, we went back to our loungers by the pool for a while then play...