Hi to you all - I do hope you are well. This week has been leading up to my flight out of New Zealand. Since I last wrote on this site I visited an old friend and spent a couple of days catching up in Hamilton, a city about 2 hours away from Auckland; rejoining the Magic bus in Auckland to explore the Bay of Island, Pihia and Cape Reigna (which is right at the top of New Zealand; and finally back again to Auckland to plan for the next part of the trip to sunny S...

Hello all - nice to see you again I've been in the South Island for about a week at this point. Its been a pretty shattering week - long, long bus journeys. The Magic bus journeys have been brilliant for the eyes, but my body is reaching the end for a little while. The early starts and long days on the bus and the cold have begun to grate a little. Tomorrow I fly north to Hamilton and see an old friend. This negative point aside, the week has been a good one. I...

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening Since I last wrote, I started the bus tour. I'm doing the tour with a company called Magic. Its a hop on-hop off kind of thing, so you never quite stay with the same people. You can get off at a destination and stay a couple of days, do whatever you want to do and get another bus a couple of days later. The bus (driver) takes us to places of interest and does a commentary along the way - the quality of this commentary varies somewh...

Hi there from Auckland - I do hope you've had a good day. I arrived in Auckland on the 27th June - my birthday! This was after a long, long, greulling (did I say long) 24 hour flight via LA. I am so pleased I won't be doing that again, as I'll be flying in the other direction in much shorter bursts from now on... On arrival I thought I would try to battle through the jet lag and just try to force my body to get into the timeline of New Zealand. I failed miserabl...