Its nearly over...

After 6 weeks, New Zealand is coming to an end.

We have traveled around, north to south, east to west, totaling up over 7 thousand Kilometers. Its been an adventure, its been inspiring, and its been expensive. But worth every penny!!

We have picked up 4 hitch hikers on route, stopped at too many vineyards to remember - tasting wines varying from petrol to passion fruit. We've camped at 3 petrol stations, been to 3 spas, eaten lamb only once but eaten chili con carne aver 20 times (never eating it again), become aces at making Tuna pasta (another, ' not eating that again' food stuff) and avid fans of 'luncheon meat' . We've embraced illegal freedom camping, but told to 'move on' only once. We bought snorkels and snorkeled in stormy waters seeing nothing, burnt feet on hot water beach, been shocked at the price on internet at every moment of the day, wallowed in natural thermal rivers getting too hot and slept in the van in freezing conditions only to wake up with frozen windows. We have seen New Zealand's stunning landscapes from both ground and air, jumped from suspended platforms and from planes. We've come to think of a hot shower to be a luxury, been initiated into the camper van club by giving the obligatory wave to every, and i mean every van we drive past, made countless U turns, visited every I-site and had no trouble with the language barrier for once! And to top it off on our last day we saw hundreds of baby fur seals messing around in a waterfall pool. Overall Its been incredible and memorable, and we now have no money left.

So what have we done in our last few poverty stricken days.. we have watched the world cup, drank copious amount of alcohol, eaten out at an indian where he did us a very 'hush- hush' deal, lunched at a thai restaurant with speakers big enough for a night club, and more recently lunched at a Harry Krishna vegetarian place, with harry him self serving us! Well, you gotta live properly hav'nt you!?!

Tonight its an all night sports fest, starting with NZv IRL rugby, then world cup footie with Argentina taking on someone( and being now a bit argentine, we will be wholly behind our second home nation) then its the england game. Thanks to time differences, we shall start this marathon at 7.30 pm, and get back to our room at around 8.30 am tomorrow. We will then catch (or not) a plane to sydney, where we shall sleep for days.

I hope you have enjoyed our traveling blogs. Sydney and the following months will be a little different, with us trying to get jobs to enable us to continue this trip until the real world catches up with us. While the blogs may involve less stuff about where we have been ( not that most of them have informed you of this, leaving it to a blog like this which tries to list all the highlights as the others have been far to full random stories, and hungover blatherings) we hope to continue them in some shape and form. The pics will also keep on coming and get close to up to date very soon, as if you were relying on them to see where we had been, you would think we stopped at the top of a Patagonian mountain for the last 2 months!

Its been amazing, and now i must go as i want to have a minute or two of sleep before our last night as backpackers.... for a while anyway!

jonny xx