It's wet down under

So I've been in Oz for a couple of weeks now, living at Party House with my cousin Sam, and hanging with he, Hannah, and their respective other halves, Chris and Michelle.

I've not been up to huge amounts of stuff so far as I've needed some time to relax, and it's been pissing down with rain pretty much every day since I got here. We managed to get down to the dog track the other evening and it stayed dry, thankfully, and we've headed down to the Fish Market in Sydney, I've cooked some dinners for the Party House 5 (pictured below), been to the pub, the usual.


I headed down to Wildlife World at Darling Harbour yesterday which was a fun way tp spend an afternoon, the only disappointment being that the Funnel Web Spiders were really hard to see as they tend to hide in burrows... I managed to get some great photos whilst I was there though, although it was a shame the Taipan (the snake I most wanted to see) was hiding at the back of its tank. That said, the entrance fee was worth it just to see the Wombat, or 'Bear-pig' as it was dubbed by the American next to me who'd spent a good 20 minutes watching him and laughing at his antics. There were obviously Wallabys and Koalas, and they also had a cool collection of lizards and dragons - one of which you can see below. Oooh, the magic of t'interweb.


It's Tuesday today, which means quiz night down at the pub, which should be fun, and there's a big party on Friday so watch out Sydney!

Hopefully I'll be heading north soon in search of better weather, so keep an eye out in a couple of weeks for a more exciting update!

Photos

You may have noticed but I've got my photos up, finally. There's a link on the right hand side that'll take you straight there. I'll add more to the blog as I go too I would imagine....

Australian mobile number

Hi guys, my Aussie mobile number is: 00 61 41859 9637 - my UK mobile will be turned off pretty much most of the time but I'll check for text messages occasionally.

So I went to New Zealand, eh?

So, it's been a while since my last post - unfortunately I didn't have access to t'interweb whilst I was there, hence the lack of online presence. Rest assured though folks, I'm back!

So, back a couple of weeks - had a very long flight from LAX (worst airport in the world fact fans) and got almost no sleep, but never mind, got to watch some good movies which killed a few hours. We were nearly redirected to Christchurch (an hour from Auckland, and on the South Island) due to fog but luckily we managed to land. Just.

New Zealand is an amazing place - I spent a few days in Auckland relaxing, and headed over to Piha beach. It's a lovely place with black sand and very dangerous rips, and the drive across the mountains to reach it was amazing - the views are just incredible.

After a few days in Auckland we flew to Christchurch and took a minibus to Kaikoura, winding along the coastal road and schlepping up mountains at 10KPH. Kaikoura is a lovely place, nothing like seaside towns in England.

The hotel in Kaikoura was lovely - we had a large room with a kitchen, a balcony that was (literally) 20 feet from the ocean with views of the mountains on our left, and a spa bath that was very relaxing,, especially after swimming in the sea.

Ah yes, swimming in the sea. With dolphins. That had to be the most incredible thing I've ever done - we went out on a boat with wetsuits, snorkels and all that jazz, and pretty soon saw a pod of dolphins. Once we were given the signal to dive in we went and swam with the dolphins, who were playing with us - circling around us, jumping around, just amazing. We did four swims and each time there were hundreds of dolphins everywhere - you could just float and look down through your mask and they'd be swimming past you, underneath you... We swam for around an hour, saw two types of dolphins (dusky dolphins and common dolphins) and also saw some seals, and it was worth every penny. We nearly booked straight back on to the next tour when we got off the boat...

After Kaikoura we headed down to Dunedin, and once again nearly got sent back to Christchurch because of fog. We landed on the second attempt though...

Whilst in Dunedin (well, Taieri Mouth) we headed up to Alexandria for lunch, and stopped by the Clyde Dam, and we also went to a place on the Dunedin peninsula where you go on a tour on 8 wheel drive off road vehicles to see seals and penguins. We were really lucky because we ended up getting a private tour....

The rest of the trip was fairly laid back, with a few tours of Auckland and the harbour. We also popped over to Devonport for a walk on the beach which was a pleasant day out.

That's pretty much the New Zealand part of the trip - the photos should be going up very soon so keep an eye on http://www.flickr.com/photos/morals so you can see pics from the whole trip (Canada, USA and NZ).