Heading down South!

Thats me... jumping off Mt Eden!

After another brief stay in Auckland we got back on the Kiwi bus to begin out journey south through the north Island. We first had a quick trip up Mt. Eden which over looks the whole of Auckland, its pretty breathtaking, and really shows you some scale of the city (seems A LOT smaller when you're actually there).

We then began our main journey down to Mercury Bay via the beautiful 'Cathedral Cove'. 'Cathedral Cove' is the place that took the Pevensie children on there second trip to Narnia in the film version of Prince Caspian. It was an amazing beach with beautiful scenery, something that New Zealand seems to do VERY well! After we'd had a swim in the sea it was time to hike back up the cliff to the bus and on to Mercury Bay; named because Captain Cook took his boat there to watch the transit of Mercury. We stayed in a nice little homely hostel called Turtle Cove where we met a couple of lasses from the Uk - Beth and Helen, as well as got to know some of the other guys from the bus. After an evening of drinking, playing pool and winning some games of poker it was time to go to bed ready for the journey to Rotarua (or Rottenrura as some of the locals call it!). Ady mentionned most of the stuff we did here but suffice to say it was brilliant! Racing driving, sledging (with wheels...) and relaxing in one of the top 5 Spas in the World.. can't get any better than that!

the fine details of booking flights

When Ady and myself first decided to go travelling it was a bit of a random decision; more of a way to escape working life and do something different than embrace all the World had to offer.

After various discussions we had a BIG list of countries we'd love to squeeze in and an appointment to visit STA in Birmingham to reign us in to what we could actually manage! The lucky travel agent / Tour operator / STA agent person in question was Dawn from the Birmingham uni branch (Thankyou!). She took the time (2 hours I think?!) to tell us about all the available options for RTW tickets that were available and advised us which would be best to satisfy our needs; it turned our that satisfying our needs required us to alter our (over ambitious) needs but we were able to get there in the end.

Booking with Quantas we ended up with the following flights:

• [London, Heathrow to New York, JFK]
• [LA, Tom Bradley to Fiji, Nadi ]
• [Fiji, Nadi to NZ, Auckland]
• [NZ, Christchurch to AUS, Melbourne Int]
• [AUS, Cairns to Singapore, Changi]
• [Thailand, Bangkok to Hong Kong, International]
• [Hong Kong, International to London, Heathrow]

Its worth noting that when booking flights you can usually only book 12 months in advance; this meant that we had to put through preliminary dates all within within the next 9 months or so but STA offer the chance to revise these dates (without extra charge) once flights become available; allowing you the flexibility to book your flights and get the money part out of the way but then sort the exact dates later on.

After you have made the initial booking you have 60(ish) days to pay the balance of the flights; during this time the taxes can change, and so the price can rise or fall. To help us out Dawn kindly re-booked the flights approx. 2 weeks after our first booking which gave us extra time to pay - very useful when you're waiting for the wages to role in. The flights came in at a cool £1480 (a huge chunk of which seems to be tax and apparantly will keep rising - carbon emission taxes / higher oil prices etc!) and will allow us to directly visit the USA, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong; although whilst in east Asia we're hoping to do our own thing for a few months and squeeze in a few more countries.