Our Visit To The Shire: Hobbiton was one of the BIG “must do” things on our NZ list, and we woke up very excited to be heading off on our Adventure. A little trepidation was involved though, after having enforced down-time in Rotorua, due to the insidious thermal sulphur fumes that you just can NOT get away from, as from what we had seen in the tour stuff, it looked like Hobbiton had some serious hills… A bit of background here: We’d both got a very large smothering of the fumes, when we had gone to one of the local parks in Rotorua to see the bubbling pools, and had…

Oh gawd it is soooo COLD tonight!!! Guess when we were driving up here, the road-side signs saying: “Drive Carefully – Beware of Ice”, should have been a clue… Added Later: Yup, no wonder we’re cold. Out having a cuppa after dinner – and it’s 2degrees!!!!

Why go to the bottleo, the phone shop, the grocery store, the parking booth & mitre 10, when you can get it all in one lil shop!!! This place is NUTS!!!! (in a good way lol)

We haven’t posted for a few day – as you’ll have noticed maybe. A wonderful man left our family this week, losing his battle with cancer. Pop – you will be missed by all whose lives you touched xxx ❤

Just a few pics from the cruise, so you have an idea of the beautiful sights… Click on the first photo, and you’ll be able to scroll through the rest. SUCH incredible beauty that photos just don’t do justice…

Sarahs Views: You’ve all heard of “murrie-time”, I’m sure. Ya know how it is: I’ll be there at 10″, can mean mean anything from around 1045 to about 2ish… Well, here they have Kiwi Kilometers. Atherton to Mareeba? About 40ks, about 20 mins. Here, one does NOT ask how far it is, but rather how long it takes… Take yesterday as a fiiiine example. 61kms to where we wanna go. Kewl – says us, about 45mins at the most… Ohhhhhh HELL NO!!! Try well over two and half hours!!! I was about ready to start eating the luggage by this point! And we knowww I do not get nicer as…

Suzeys Views: Picked up rental car, not a bad car, one slight difference to a car that we are use to – the hand brake is activated by foot, and it just happens that the seat raiser is where a normal hand brake lever would be.  Yes, what your thinking is exactly what happened. Nearly put my head through the roof of the car,  I kept trying to put the handbrake on, all that happened was my seat kept raising, and the car kept creeping backwards. A few days into our driving around the beautiful countryside of New Zealand: still having trouble with handbrake, though i am getting better as…