Toronto

We are now in Canada, it's wonderful!

Everyone is so cool - from the girl who gave us 50 cents so we could catch the bus to the free internet at the libraries.

Best still, our hostel has free pancakes and hot chocolate for breakfast. Mmm.

[Updated by Mark]

This picture is the CN tower, the world's tallest building at five hundred and something metres. And it is metres - they use the metric system over here which is very handy. It was just a short stroll from our hostel.

We've seen some fun stuff here, we spend most of an afternoon at the museum (got pretty museumed-out after a while) and also things like squirrels (jittery and hyperactive), Chinatown (interesting and a cheap place to get dinner) and streetcars.

And this ...

is of course the Niagara Falls. These are actually the American falls (the border goes up the middle of the river), the Canadian ones are much more impressive but are difficult to photograph through the constant spray. As you can see, there is still a heap of ice piled up at the bottom of the falls.

The Canadians not only have better waterfalls, but a better view of both sets of falls. None of them gloated about this but I'm sure that's just because they're such nice people. I would have gloated ;-)

LA: City of Angels, big cars and junk food

We arrived in LA after 11.5 hours of stuffing ourselves on aeroplane food (the ice-creams at midnight were a nice touch) and had a remarkably easy transition to our swanky hotel. We indulged in some local cuisine (Denny's). We felt guilty enough to use the exercise room for quite a while....

The flight the next morning to Toronto didn't follow quite the same pattern. I managed to lose Mark (trying to return the hotel keys he'd kept in his pocket by mistake), and after an hour or so checked in anyway, feeling guilty (headline: boyfriend abandoned in LA). I got to the front of the security check queue where the offical saw the letters SSSS printed on my ticket and said "oooHoooh you've been nominated for SPECIAL screening"...

I was sent down a corridor to another queue, another person, another person, another person - each saying "oh, you're SSSS, umm okay - HEY we've got an SSSS over here!".

Actually it was a total anticlimax because they just took me to this little glass box and swabbed my shoes and money belt for traces of explosives. I then proceeded to the lounge where Mark was waiting, having checked in long before I'd noticed he was missing.

Also, don't travel American Airlines. No free food on an international flight, you have to pay for the headphones and the airhostesses can be described as 'scary'.

Jafa Paradise Ctnd.

Yep, Auckland - we've had fun up here, sold the car to a friend of a friend (thanks Jeff!) and caught up with heaps of friends and family. Here's a photo of the place we went abseiling - Fairy Falls. Funny, Barb and Paul said that if I hadn't been busy that morning they would have taken us out for a picnic or something, and that this was exactly the place they had in mind!

Jafa paradise

Well, we've finished our North Island tiki-tour and now we're settling into the Auckland life (i.e. we've almost forgotten the rest of the country exists).

We're crashing at Mark's old flat - this massive 11-bedroom wooden flat in Parnell. The flatmates are hilarious fun - this morning Mark has gone abseiling with one of them who is a professional stuntman. He's almost the most hyperactive person I've ever met.

Mark's sold his car so it's just us and our packs now. Tomorrow is the big day!

We had a great time in Coromandel too, very lazy. We spent two nights camping at Hahei and didn't do a lot more than visiting Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach. The best thing about Hot Water Beach was how funny it was looking at a bunch of tourists all huddled in little holes in the beach. After a while we decided to use our superior technical skills to create our own pool, but since we weren't there early enough we had to take some property right by the water. In this case, waterfront property isn't the prime pick - our coastal engineering skills weren't quite up to the task and we got the odd cold surge as our wave defences were overwhelmed.

The water is still warm up here though (by Chch standards) and made for some very pleasant swims :-)

A southern road trip

A bit out of order this one... but a couple of weeks before we left Chch we tripped around the bottom of the South Island and visited Stewart Island. We had really good weather the whole time - often cloudy but usually only in the mornings, and it only rained at night.

Stewart Island was great, I reckon it's definitely worth the effort to get there. Despite Fouveau Straight's fearsome reputation we had pretty smooth crossings both ways - nevertheless we stayed clear of the custard squares before the crossing on Julian's advice ;-) We paddled around Paterson Inlet for a couple of days in a double sea kayak (we later found out these are called "divorce boats") and up Freshwater River to Freshwater Landing Hut for the night. We camped (because the hut was full) and got tormented by a weka who was determined to get to our food. He succeeded too, the little bastard, and chomped a small bite out of every one of our slices of bread! We also walked the Rakiura Track as a not-too-demanding day walk.

I would also recommend the magnificent Niagara Falls in the Catlins (not! - check out the photos) and the Lake Monowai/Borland Road area of Fiordland, where we did an overnight tramp to Green Lake. Mmm, blue cheese mushrooms and bubbly wine for Valentines Day - don't believe Sylvia when she says I'm not romantic.

It's also quite fun to stalk random tourists around Southland and then follow them to Stewart Island - we found one (Sally) and harassed her for several days, popping up at every opportunity.

Click on the link to http://dangerballs.fotopic.net to find our photo gallery - if you click on the smaller images you'll get bigger ones appear and you can read any stories associated with them. These stories have a bit more detail on some of the places we went and the things we did. They're a bit out of order for some reason, but there you go.

Make sure you fill in your email address on both our blog and our gallery if you want to be informed immediately when there are any changes :-)

Location: the Tron

Well, we've made it to the hub of society: Hamilton!

We've been graciously hosted all the way so far - thanks the Kanes in Wellington, Amy Stevens in Waikanae, Mr Fred in Napier, more Kane in Gisbourne, Jude in Rotovegas and now Johnno and Claudia in H-town.

So far we've found the other North Island natives friendly too. Although, Fred's cat did undertake a vicious 2am attack on my toe which I suspect was premeditated.

Driving around East Cape was cool - really remote and beautiful beaches. Once photomaster Mark gets around to it we'll have spectacular panoramas of Cook's landing place and the longest wharf in the Southern Hemisphere, but at the moment you'll just have to imagine them.

[Here's a picture from a beach at Waihau Bay, where we camped for the night - Mark]

Leaving... on a jet plane

This is my first blog attempt so excuse the lame title.

Today is all about packing. If I see another box I will scream (just ask Mark, I've screamed several times today already). Tomorrow in our last day in the almighty metropolis of Christchurch before we hit the North Island, huzzah! Quite the excitment.