Day 9 - Thursday : Hot Water Beach and Whitianga You would have thought that by now, the chickens, ducks, cats and dogs would have...

For anyone who has never read The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings or sat through Peter Jackson's 6 films, this post may not mean much.  But ...

Day 10 - Friday From Hobbiton, we had a straight run down to Taupo for the biggest excitement of our trip so far. Lottie & Hellene, best...

Day 14 - Tuesday As Hellene had to work all day, Lottie and I had made plans to visit Te Pui in Rotorua.  Trying to get my tongue around...

Day 16 - Thursday Today was caving day. The Waitomo caves appear on most of the “must do in the North Island”, lists and are famous for...

Day 17 - Friday Leaving Taupo was hard - especially for the girls.  It takes over 24 hours to get to New Zealand from the UK (if you...

Day 18 - Saturday. Despite the harbour view element of our “special weekend break” not quite living up to expectations, we had high...

Day 18 - Sunday Arriving at the the Inter Island ferry port - felt a little surreal as it was almost identical to every other ferry port...

Day 19 Monday Waking up on Cape Foulwind, it was, surprise surprise, raining again. We had planned to go back to the seal colony on our...

After my 6 flight, 48 hour marathon, getting back from New Zealand,  I was determined to keep the travel as simple as possible for my...

So, at the end of the last post, I was getting some much needed sleep, aboard a large jet ( I'm not going to bestow the title of "Jumbo"...

To recap - After a tempestuous and traumatic 24 hours of travel, I was now standing on the dock outside Male airport watching the boat...

As I mentioned in my last post, I didn't go to bed until 3.00am, so I wasn't exactly up with the lark the next morning. I tottered...

After my amazing "Close Encounter of the Turtle Kind", I was keen to get back out on to the reef to see what else this amazing place had...

I was up bright and early for my first booked trip - to see Manta Rays and hopefully swim with them.  Bari had already warned me that...

In terms of anecdotes to share that were "blogworthy" -Friday was a relatively quiet day. After breakfast I went to the beach for my...

At the end of my last post I was anticipating the assisted dive I had planned for this morning and had intended to wipe the slate clean,...

Today I woke up with 2 parts of my brain having an argument. Inner child:  Dolphins, Dolphins, I’m gong to see some Dolphins. Yay...

As much as I adore snorkelling, there is only so much you can say about it without sending everyone into a catatonic state, so I have a...

Having finally got to grips with the Go Pro, the previous day, I was quite excited to try it out on a different reef, which meant another...