In Coromandel

Hi again!

Over the past few days we've managed to do a lot! We met some German girls at the hostel we were staying at and from Paihia we all drove up to Cape Reinga, the most northern tip of NZ. It was beautiful! Since the we have left Northland and made our way down South. We are now in Thames on the Coromandel Peninsula. Yesterday we took a 7,5 h hike up an incredible mountain so today we are a bit tired... 

Sorry about the short post, we are sitting at a library and only 2 min remain of our internet time! We'll fill you in more later :) 

Haruru Falls in Paihia

 
 Eating bananas on a boat in the Bay of Islands

 Bay of Islands

 COLD lunch at Cape Reinga

 Cape Reinga

 90 mile beach at Cape Reinga

 The top of ou7,5 h hike

 Cape Reinga again...

Happy to have made it to the top!

Long time no see...

 ...But we are still alive!! Our little car has now taken us about 450 km up through Auckland and Northland and we are now in the Bay of Islands. From Auckland we headed up to Whangarei and spent a day at the BEAUTIFUL Ocean Beach. We spent a few hours on the beach, admiring the surfers and taking a swim in the amazing waves (but it was cold!) before we hiked up a mountain and got a beautiful view over Whangarei Heads. We had dinner at the beach parking lot, cooking pasta with our newly-bought portable stove and spent our second night sleeping in the car! The next day we headed up a winding road to Waipoua Forest where we hiked up another mountain (be aware, we will be doing a lot of hiking) and saw the world's biggest Kauri tree, Tane Mahuta. We also had one of the best lunches in history: cottage cheese, almonds and raisins on a fence overlooking green meadows and the never-ending ocean. Finally, we ended up in Paihia, a cute coastal village in the Bay of Islands. It's quite cold and windy but thanks to another hike (this time to a waterfall), we have been walking around in t-shirts! We can't believe we've only been in New Zealand for a week, we've already seen so much! Enjoy the pics :)

 

First view on the road, don't really know what Caroline is doing...

Happy car camper!

 

Breakfast time in Whangarei. Oatmeal and bananas. Why are we so cool?

Beautiful mountains, beautiful NZ...

In action, cottage cheese at Ocean Beach. 

It doesn't get much better than this

 View over Ocean Beach

We still have energy after a long hike

The best lunch in history

Hokianga Harbour

Today's hike to Haruru Falls.

Car owners!!!

Hi again everybody!

We wanna let you all know that from today we are owners of this beautiful Ford Festiva! We are very grateful that we found a car for such a good price so quickly! Today we have got the insurance fixed, we've also got positive answers from a couple of farms where we might be working in the future! It's a good day, again! :D

A bit nervous about driving on the left side of the road, we're now gonna practise a bit on smaller roads before we start heading north up on the island!

Thank you for reading! :)

Auckland

Hey everybody!

Our first post from NZ! It's our second day in Auckland but it feels like we've been here longer than that. After our 34 h trip we arrived at YHA International Auckland (feeling kind of gross) and were surprised by how cozy and nice the hostel was. There's a huge kitchen and the rooms are very nice so we actually booked an extra night. We had originally planned on staying until today but now it looks like we will be leaving Auckland tomorrow.

We spent the first afternoon walking around the city and harbour in shorts (even though it was probabaly only 15 degrees, but hello, we're Swedish and it was sunny!). That night we went to bed early to try to fix our jet-lag and ended up sleeping for 12 hours. The weather was worse yesterday, it was rainy and kind of dull, so we spent the morning at an internet cafe (the same one we're at now) and started lookning for a car to buy and some farms to contact. We didn't have any luck yesterday but hope to do better today. The afternoon wasn't that exciting either; we had an amazing meal consisting of cottage cheese, yoghurt, bananas and bread and ended up taking a well-needed power nap (or two) afterwards. Dinner at the hostel with a nice German girl who lives in our room ended the day.

 Chilling in the harbour

 Auckland Sky Tower

Lunch at the hostel

Hop everyone's great, we are!! Don't know when we'll have internet again but we'll keep you posted about what's going on. And oh, I think we managed to change something in the settings so hopefully you'll be able to comment now :) And please, COMMENT!

In Singapore!!

  We just landed at Singapore airport and we want to let you all know that we're doing very well. Non of us have been in Asia before, so we're happy to stop here, even though the stop just lasts for 90 minutes. The time difference confuses us a bit, but it's ok. When we looked at the watch, thinking it would be 5am in Singapore, it showed 5 pm, and in Sweden it's not 1am! :)
  We still have a bit to travel, but we're so excited to get to NZ where our hostel is waiting for us. When we came to Stockholm, they told us that we could not be seated next to each other on the longest flights, London-Singare, nor Singapore-Melbourne. But thanks to a sweet girl at the plane who happily switched place with one of us, we're now sitting next to each other all the way to New Zealand. Happy girls!

Now, off to Melbourne!

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog!

In just a few hours we are leaving for our big adventure! Being first-time blogers we haven't gotten it all figured out yet but we hope that you'll be able to see what we post. We want to share our adventures with our family and friends and if you're wondering what we are up to, this will be the place to look! The guide books have been read, the visas have been accepted and our bags our (almost) packed. With only each other and our backpacks we're heading to NEW ZEALAND!!