Handy travel hint: Getting through airports is made a lot easier when you’ve got a child in a wheelchair. Those people that push you around the airport know every single way to jump a queue and get you settled in a lounge quickly. Much better than one of the swanky Gold cards! After 7 months […]
Read more "Flying to Asia"When we’re travelling, ‘having a treat’ has a special meaning. It can be something small, like a decent cup of coffee or an ice cream for the girls, or it can be something else. The girls’ treat today was an ice-cream, which had been emailed to us by our friends Tom and Elizabeth. (Well, emailed […]
Read more "Having a treat"Emily has quickly adjusted to life wearing a plaster cast. After the first night, it doesn’t seem to have caused her any pain, and she was quite happy to sit and watch satellite TV all day long, without having to move a muscle. And when the sun came out, she moved out onto the veranda, […]
Read more "The Farm at Whangaruru"Hmm…This morning Emily seemed okay with her ankle, but we weren’t entirely sure whether it was okay or not. Our worry was that when we leave for Asia next weekend, we’d want to be confident that her ankle was okay and getting better. Although it was bandaged up well (any sheep or cow would have […]
Read more "Should her foot really look like that?"After another emotional farewell to Sarah’s parents (with all the bird flu news, they’re even more nervous about us heading to Asia next weekend), we drove north towards the Bay of Islands, the area where the first European settlers arrived in New Zealand. But we’re not really here for the history, but because we’d been […]
Read more "The Farm, Whangaruru – WHOOPS!"We’ve now moved to the west coast of the North Island, and are in a village called Raglan, which is where the surfers of New Zealand gather – and our view of the beach is great! The Solscape hostel is a surfers paradise, with half railway carriages as double rooms dotted around the grounds, full […]
Read more "The Surfers Paradise"The weather’s taken a turn for the worse on the coast, with grey clouds covering up the blue sky, and delivering rain showers through the day. So we went swimming to the outdoor pool! Well, the pools are thermally heated, so instead of being cool, they’re heated to a range of temperatures between 31 degrees […]
Read more "Going up the wall…"When we left England, we’d decided to get the girls typhoid jabs done in New Zealand, so that Emily was a little bit older. So this morning the girls got to pop down to the medical centre and get them. It was quick and easy, and most importantly for them, they were rewarded with a […]
Read more "Getting jabs"After driving through Rotorua quickly to get to Mount Manganui, went back to see some more of the thermal sites, and to find out where that awful smell comes from. We stopped in the municipal park, to see where the steam was coming out of the ground. There were steaming hot lakes, and mud pools […]
Read more "Rotorua stinks!"While we’ve been on the South Island, we’d not seen many Maoris or signs of Maoris. But since leaving Wellington, we’ve seen more in a day than in the whole of the previous two weeks. Somebody explained to me that the Maoris lived mostly on the North Island because of its warmer climate, although there […]
Read more "The North Island"Another ‘driving’ day – this time the destination made it all well worthwhile! We left Wellington and drove eight hours up to Mount Manganui, which is on the coast in the Bay of Plenty. It was a long drive, especially as New Zealand roads don’t go in straight lines like in Australia, but bend and […]
Read more "Arriving at the atrium"There doesn’t seem to be much in Wellington to amuse us, but we found the Te Papa museum (The Museum of New Zealand) great with the girls. Although they weren’t keen on going (how would five-floors-of-museum-exhibits grab you for a Sunday treat?) we soon found out it offered lots of entertainment for children and grown-ups. […]
Read more "Te Papa Museum"I discovered this morning, as I slipped on to the ground as I stepped out of the shower cubicle, that I’m not wearing thongs any more. Well, at least I’m not wearing things called thongs any more. (You may at this point fear that Sarah’s taken over the website, but no its still Ray writing. […]
Read more "I’m not wearing thongs any more…"We’ve done our time on South Island, and got up at 6am this morning to catch the ferry to the North Island. This weekend is the end of the summer holidays so the ferry was split between Kiwis ending their holidays, and international tourists in the middle of theirs. The crossing took 3 and a […]
Read more "Heading North"