New Zealand - Monday 23rd December

Today was mainly travelling but we went to a kiwi house/bird sanctuary. It was awesome coz I finally saw KIWIS :-0!!! Also there were lots of other birds like:

Kaka

Gekko

Kea

We also went to The Hamilton Garden. I liked it because of all the amazing architecture, like:

Italian courtyards

Indian courtyards

New Zealand - Sunday 22nd December

Hi guys, today I probably spent more time underground than overground just in caves! The first cave went down more than 50 meters (I think) and had some epic stalactites and stalagmites. Also some of the tours you could do were CRAZY, on one you climbed the cave, on another you could float down the cave's river, but we just walked on a footpath through the cave. The second one was brill coz you could see a RIDICULOUS amount of glow-worms on one boat trip. I also bought a golden tiger eye pendant.

Curtain stalactite

stalactites

New Zealand - Friday 20th December

Today I did a 2 hour canoe trip on the Whanganui river.We had to get a jet boat up the river and canoe down. It was brill coz we went into rapids, the guy driving the jet boat up kept spinning it (on purpose) . Sadly near the end I got freezing but luckily unlike bro I didn't capsize :-) ! We also walked to the 'bridge to nowhere', it got name from a photo taken 20 years after it was built because it looked like it went straight into the New Zealand bush.

Canoe 

The Bridge to Nowhere

New Zealand - Wednesday 18th December

Today we went to Zealandia (a bird sanctuary). It was teaming with bird life and quite a few lizards around as well. The funny thing was is that sometimes it sounded like R2-D2 was near because of the Bell Bird and the Tui. Another thing was Zealandia is known as a onshore island (that's a completely fenced off piece of land onshore).

Takehe

Californian Quail

Tuatura

Hihi

Kaka

Wildlife and Walks

Sorry for the delay - I had no wifi, but on with the blog.  Yesterday we went to two places - The Twelve Apostles and Tower Hill (an Aussie wildlife reserve in a volcanic crater)!  The Twelve Apostles were good but the wildlife reserve was ABSOLUTELY EPIC ;-)  Because we saw:

• Kangaroos
• Wallabies
• Koalas
• Emus
• Poisonous snake
• Echidna

So it was great!

Today we did a lot of walking and saw loads of wildlife as well.  The weird thing was that at the top of a massive mountain, some rain which was coming parted and went around us all together.  Also, some of the wildlife included:

• Geckos
• Kookaburras
• Cockatoos

Copperhead Snake

 

Kangaroo

Emu

Koala

Echidna

Kookaburra

Gecko

Cockatoos

First Few Days

Hi, I'm back and I've been to a couple of places already, so here are my highlights so far:

• Going to a Korean/Japanese restaurant called the "Oriental Spoon" for lunch, which serves BRILL food, spicy and tasty
• Seeing some past, present and future tech at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
• Sunny walk with 100ish painted bollards along a waterfront.  Some of them were funny and some were painted very well, but on every one there was a rabbit somewhere

• Learning how to surf with a very friendly company.  It was absolutely EPIC :-) !! And I actually stood up on the board on a wave (harder than it looks)
• Being a surf pro :-)
• Seeing koalas, cockatoos and parrots  

Counting down the days!

Hi I'm Josh, Mel's son. And this blog is all about our trip to Australia, New Zealand and Dubai.

At the moment there's only 3 DAYS!! to the time we get that plane to #awesomeness. But there's still school now and it's going very well. I feel absolutely brill and can't wait till we go!