We then faced our first overnight bus across to the state of Chiapas. Our first stop here was to visit another Mayan ruins, Palenque. The temples were not as big as Tikal, but it was a lot more interesting as a lot more had been excavated so you can really see the details and understand a bit more. Unfortunately, there was a bit less wildlife, boo hoo! We decided to go off the beaten track and stay in the jungle near the ruins. It was a crazy little village (El Panchan) amongst the trees, filled with hobos/hippies and howler monkeys (they sound like dying dinosaurs when calling - it was a little terrifying!) What was more terrifying was finding a cockroach in our shack that night before bed. What ensued was mild panic as we both ran around the room with only a bin, a vase and a flower (used as a poking device) whilst moving all furniture in our path to capture the little bugger. Bets finally succeeded in doing this but needless to say we slept in our sleeping bag liners with them over our heads! We did enjoy a fun night in the jungle though with some entertainment from the crazy hippies playing music and fire dancing!

We really liked the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, which was also in the Chiapas. We had been warned but weren't totally prepared for the chilly, mountain conditions though, causing us to need actual jeans and jumpers rather than sweating it up bikini stylee. We saw A LOT of churches and cathedrals and visited artesian markets and had more of a culture injection by visiting a historical house/museum where an explorer and journalist couple had lived. The town was also filled with what appeared to be European hippies and we couldn't quite work out where they had come from! Despite having to wrap up super warm, we really enjoyed this cobbled streeted town.

Our second overnight bus took us back to the Yucatan to the town of Merida, which had been recommended and sounded good in the guidebook, but it wasn't our favourite place as it was a bit hectic and grimey! We spent the whole day with sleazy mexican men blowing kisses at us and we have never seen so many churches in our lives. The highlight was definitely the free breakfast (fruit, cereal, toast, omelettes, pancakes, etc) and the second tiny black kitten of our trip at the hostel.

We decided to spend our last few days in Central America on the island just off Cancun, called Isla Mujeres. We had a super fun time here, the hostel was really lively and we met lots of fun people. The best bit was our new found friend Baptiste, who was a 4 seater golf buggy that we hired with another English guy and ventured around the island on. We visited a turtle sanctuary that was half cute and half traumatising as there was a tank of literally hundreds of baby turtles all squirming all over each other and we couldnt work out if one or two were dead or not?!?! On the island there were some beautiful houses and resorts looking out onto rugged coastline...it was like a postcard! Bets also enjoyed a freshly caught and cooked whole fishy. Our island stay also included the night of doom. We are not sure if this is due to the lack of food and drink in the day, but we should of read the signs when after the first mojito with dinner laura says "well thats definitely gone to my head." Back at the hostel the night continued with chatting to our fellow travellers, a fairly unsuccessful game of spanish simpsons cluedo, music, dancing and bonfire on the beach and MANY more drinks. It can only be said that the next day was not fun. We wasted a whole day of potential sun tanning as we could not move from our beds and Coops could not make it 5 metres down the beach without having to stop and throw up behind a wheelie bin. Nice. The two day hangover has left her with some serious scars and alcohol still fills her with fear. But, we can safely say that we really enjoyed our time here and in Central America in general. Its gone by super quick and it feels bizarre to be moving on to the next place, but also exciting.

New Zealand here we come............

P.S if we were coming home now...you'd be REALLY impressed with our tans!

written by  coopsandbets on December 6, 2010 from Auckland, New Zealand
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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All worked out fine, and we hopped on our super long flight to 'Noi Zoiland'!!!!

Woooo!

written by  coopsandbets on December 7, 2010 from Wellington, New Zealand
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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A lot of our time in Auckland was spent deliberating over the best way to spend our 6 weeks here. After getting about a million different opinions, we opted for the STRAY bus (for those not in-the-know, it's a hop-on hop-off tour bus that covers both islands). Our first excursion was up to the Northland, to visit the picturesque Bay of Islands. We stayed in a cute beach town called Paihia, which was nice to wonder round and we ventured to Haruru waterfall (you will get used to the c-razy Maoiri names for everything...we have had to!!!) Paihia is also the place where the famous 'Treaty of Waitangi' was signed between Maori chiefs and European settlers in 1840. We managed to sneak into the treaty house and meeting house to read up on it and we very much enjoyed this culture lesson as it is something that has since cropped up in lots of other places we've been to.

Our highlight here was a boat trip around the Bay, where we saw a 'school' (not too sure if this is the correct terminology) of Dolphins. There was about 15 of them (including babies) and we got right up close so we could take looooads of photos. Bets luckily got to see them jumping out of the water and rolling around. We were told that amazingly some of them were sleeping even as they moved (who knew dolphins slept!?!) It actually made us both feel a bit emotional as it was such a rare and amazing sight (cue the kleenex...) We also visited 'the whole in the rock', one of the Islands that has been eroded to have a tunnel going through it, which the boat could go all the way through. We also saw 3 seals lazing about chillaxing in the sun. The scenery was lush with bright turquoise water, really rugged coastline, but this was really weird when contrasted with farmland covered with sheep also on the islands. It was like some weird welsh parallel universe.

We also went to the Northern most point of NZ - Cape Reinga where we were seriously underwhelmed by the meeting of the 2 seas: Tasman and Pacific. Apparently it's normally very dramatic, but we had such nice weather, you could barely tell. From here we drove down 90-mile beach (does what it says on the tin) and went crazy by throwing ourselves off a sand dune on a boogie board type thing on our tummies...this ridiculous activity is known as Dune Boarding! It was very fun, but bloody hard work trying to climb it and resulted in sand everywhere!

This was our first taste of New Zealand's amazing hilly scenery, and we are loving it very much. But FYI there are definitely more cows than sheep, as dairy farming is now more prominent here....and did you know that NZ supplies a third of the worlds dairy produce?! "Amazing eh bru"!

We have also discovered some new NZ lingo:
Jandals = flip flops
Trundel = supermarket trolley
"growen" and "knowen" = grown and known
"sweet as" = that's cool
"bro" (said "bru") = mate

We have been overjoyed with the supermarkets here. Mostly because of:
- the huge supplies of Cadburys and Whittakers chocolate
- peanut butter (which appears to be a staple in every travellers
coldbag)
- normal cheese, that doesn't cost the earth
- actually having a choice of what we can make for dinner...pasta
sauce has never tasted so good.

So that's NZ so far...lots more fun to come....

Sweet as bro xxxx

written by  coopsandbets on December 8, 2010 from Wellington, New Zealand
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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Our home for 6 weeks

Hahei

Cathedral Cove

Raglan
Cool, surfer town where we wished we could of stayed longer. (Luckily we aren't surfers as the sea was apparently the flatest it has been in ages!) Instead we topped up some sexy knee tannage (good old leggings!) and checked out some of the surfers. Then (close your ears Mum) we hitchhiked back to the hostel with a man and his HUGE, over-friendly dog, when Coops was asked 'do you mind?' as he took a swig from his bottle of white wine - turns out he wasn't referring to the drink driving, but just wanted her to move out of the way of the brown paper bag! Good times!

Says it all....

Waitomo

Before the lights went out....

Maori cultural evening
Luckily we had been warned that despite this being worthwhile, it can be embarrassing unless intoxicated. Sadly we were not intoxicated. And yes it was embarrassing. We were greeted by our Maori chief in Adidas tracky b's and were hoarded into a canteen style room. He did tell us about the Maori culture and we had some yummy dinner. We then had to partake in the traditional Maori greeting, where us girls had to try our hardest not to laugh as we shook hands and touched faces/noses with 16 year old boys who had clearly been roped in for a bit of extra pocket money. Awkward!!! The aim of the evening was for the guys to learn the haka and the girls to learn how to dance with a poi (no, we didn't know what this was either!!!)

The scary haka

Sleepover for all!!

Rotorua

Looking sexy, waiting for death!!!

Taupo
Fun town with lots of backpackers on the banks of beautiful lake Taupo with views of snow capped mountains (one of which is Mount doom, lord of the rings stylee!)
This was the place that Bets decided to throw herself out of a plane! After handing over half of her life savings she thought that the 7 WHOLE minutes were definitely worth it. Quote: it was fricking awesome! We shall bypass the fact that Coops was too scared and opted for a shopping spree instead and returned with some fun new leggings from a childrens shop...do we have pumpkin patch in england???
SKY DIVE - DONE. (You will have to wait until we get home to see the video!)

Napier
We decided to go crazy and venture off the stray route to the cool art deco town of Napier, where we enjoyed wandering around town with the striking buildings. From here, we embarked on our wine tour, as Coops insisted this was a must. Turns out after handing over your dollar you are pretty much in for a heavy afternoons drinking sesh, whilst occasionally saying words such as 'oaky' and 'strawberries' whilst looking off into the distance! We did find some fun new wines that we both liked but have since completely forgotten them due to memory loss. Totally worth the money don't you think?! ;-)

Don't mind if i do!

Enjoying wine time!

We think that this is enough to read for now - we know that you have been waiting a long time for this one, so we wouldn't want to spoil you now would we!? We best get back to our white wine in the early evening sunshine and our steak for dinner.

We won't mention that we just deleted this entire thing and have had to re-write it and Letty's fingers are about to drop off. So much internet rage right now!!!!!!!!! (Don't worry the wine is easing the pain!!)

Lots of love from the impending heat wave that is Australia. Enjoy the snow everyone.
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written by  coopsandbets on December 9, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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Abel Tasman National Park
This was a beautiful spot and the best way to explore it was by sail boat (kayaking in the sea somehow just didn't appeal!) and we headed out with our crocodile dundee skipper on a catamaran. Even though it was a beautifully sunny day, we were little prepared for the gail force winds coming off the ocean once the boat had gained some knots!! By the end Coops was forced to wrap up in one of the giant waterproof blankets that were on board in case of emergency!! Nonetheless it was beautiful with turqouise blue sea and some much missed wildlife (seals, one blue penguin and lots of birds!) When we hit land for our lunch break we took the opportunity to get some sunbathing in, which after half hours kip resulted in some dodgy short tan lines (wow the sun is strong here!!) We stayed in a fun hostel/camp site where a group of our new found friends huddled on the floor amongst backpacks, foodbags and hiking boots to watch some of the much anticipated new episodes of inbetweeners (we will be forever grateful to you Kriss!!)

Barrytown
So whilst this place has a very cool name (obvo!) we can assure you it doesn't live up to much!!! Those of you who have been to New Zealand and are thinking "hmm...I don't know where that is?!" you can be forgiven. Most New Zealanders haven't even heard of it! The Stray itinerary claimed this stop off was a fun evening in an old miner's pub filled with fancy dress and getting to know your fellow travellers. In fact, we rocked up to a dodgy old man's pub where they led us to some portacabins classed as bedrooms and showed us to a mangey array of various items of other people's clothes! (Even charity shops would shudder!) However, we did manage to throw together some pretty awesome outfits and were deemed the party queens when we got all 30 people off their seats and joining in with our drinking games! Coops even won a free burger for her efforts!

Fun dressing up times

Franz Josef Glacier
We opted for a full day's hike on the glacier.

Yaayyy....I'm so freaking cold!!!

Wanaka
All that needs to be said.... Puzzling World = AMAZING!

The hilarity of puzzling world

Queenstown
It definitely lived up to expectations; really fun town in a pretty spot on the banks of the lake (I'm sure all you clever people can remember which one?!?) where we had a really fun night out drinking from tea pots in Worlds Bar! (Fear not, we haven't turned t-total, they were filled with yummy cocktails!!!) This is also the place to sample the delights of NZ famous FERG burger and we definitely gave it a fair test by comparing it to the other local burger joint Devil burger (thanks to Laura's free voucher!) We are undecided as to the official winner, but it was goooooooooooood!

We definitely opted for the tamer activity (as Queenstown is known as the adrenalin capital of NZ) of horse riding. Bets convinced Coops that getting up onto a horse for the first time would be fun and this was definitely proved right, as we spent the afternoon riding through the valley, surrounded by beautiful lupins and looking up at snow capped mountains. We also had to get our horses to wade across rivers and Coops' horse did seem to be the naughtiest one and kept stopping to eat!

Bets, ever the professional

Milford Sound
This place is talked about a lot by visitors to New Zealand, with dramatic cliff faces dropping down into the sea and waterfalls flowing down them. On the day we visited, there had been heavy rain, so the falls were huge and really spectacular - the boat even put it's nose under a couple of them soaking some unsuspecting American women! However, also due to the rain it was very misty and it was difficult to appreciate the whole impact of it all. We decided that this is definitely on our to do list for when we come back on a sunny day!!

Wind and rain battered and abused!

Stewart Island (South of the South Island)
This place is well known for its wildlife, however we saw very little and resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren't going to see a kiwi. So instead, we had a super fun time here by hiring a car with Lucy and Mara (our new homies) so that we could explore this tiny island.

Checking out "Rat" (Stewart island)

Stewart Island

Dunedin
We were sad to leave our homies as we decided to hop off the bus and stay longer here. But we had fun exploring this scottish influenced city (did you know Dunedin means Edinburgh in gallic?!?) in particular the World's steepest suburban street (no we did not walk up it!) the octagon shaped city centre and the botanic gardens with an adorable brass band of oldies and exciting aviary! Most importantly though, this was where we went to Cadbury's World!!! We put on our sexy hair nets and got eating some free samples of chocolate!! (We won't lie, there was some mild rage when there was turkish delight and marshmallow chocolates included in this. AND, when 2 small children were given WHOLE easter eggs to take home and we weren't!!! Outrageous!!!!)

Nyum nyum nyum

Sexy dinner ladies

From here, we also went to visit the Otago peninsula. We stopped off at Larnach castle to have a quick peek at the beautiful grounds and gardens.

Larnach castle

Scary, raged elephant seal

Mount Cook
We stayed at the base of Mount Cook where our room overlooked spectacular views of the mountain. From here, we did a big walk (totally unprepared with little water or sun cream supplies) to a glacial lake with hactual icebergs floating in it. It was definitely worth it though!

Mount Cook walk

Mount Cook

Christchurch
We didn't have much time here, but we were determined to like this place after hearing everyone claim it was dull! And we did like it, especially the cambridge style punting along the river. Luckily, the aftershocks have now stopped from the earthquake in September, but there was still lots of damaged buildings and repair work being carried out. We had a really fun night out here, hitting the cool strip of bars in Lordship Lane (woop woop to our dulwich homies!) and ended up cutting some shapes on the light up dance floor in 'boogie nights!'

Kaikoura
As we arrived into this seaside town, we kept spotting dolphins and seals just off the coast, so we knew we were in for a good one! People come to kaikoura to see the huge array of sealife that is abundant in this area. We went out on a whale watching trip and luckily got to spot a sperm whale (well...you basically get to see some puffs of steam coming out of its back!!) and literally hundreds of dusky dolphins!!! It was so amazing to see them jumping out of the water and doing somersaults as far as the eye could see and some swimming right up and under the boat. The squeals on board as we all watched was pretty amusing too!

So close you can almost touch it!

This is also where we watched LoTR and spent half the time going "i'm sure we've been there?!?!?"

So, this just about sums up the South Island and we have tried to fill you in as much as we can but there were so many mini-stops along the way to see incredible scenery, we just can't get it all in (and to be honest, we would never remember the names anyway!) As many people say, the South island is really visually spectacular with potential photo stops around every corner of the very windy roads! Everyone should go to New Zealand!!!!!!

Big fat hugs and christmas kisses
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written by  coopsandbets on December 20, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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View from top of cable car

Botanic gardens

Sid the squid that we made at Te Papa museum

We really loved wellington and found lots of cool areas, like Cuba Street, with lots of vintage-y, second hand clothes shops and cafes and Thorndon which was a really beautiful suburb (but we found it impossible to find the NZ author's house that we had actually gone there to see and ended up walking up and down a dual carriageway!)

A naughty young un jumping off the bridge

Best ice creams EVER

As it was the final night with some of the people we'd been on the bus with, we decided to have a big night out Welling-on stylee! This ended up as a bit of a bar crawl, where we spent too much money as we were trying to live the lives of people who actually have jobs, until we ended up in the backpacker bar for boogeying with the rest of the crowd(despite getting rage at how often the DJ repeated songs!) The night ended up in Hungry Jack's (our new found name for Burger King as this is what the crazy aussie's call it!!)

Cow bum...hahaha

The ever classy Base bar

Our new BFF Gemma

Our last adventure of NZ was the mammouth climb that every backpacker apparently "has to do," however maybe not by choice...as we soon found out. We awoke early and loaded up on porridge and bananas and prepared our extensive list of foods and liquids for the expedition, before being picked up by the minibus to take us to the base camp of Tongariro. It was a 17km walk that crosses over all different types of terrain, from deserts to snow capped peaks to climbing steep mountains. We thought it was bad enough at first as we tried to keep up with Sid and Gems who had previously done the Tongariro Crossing (so were going to climb Mount Doom instead)...we have since realised that they are clearly mountain hikers in disguise and quickly left us behind puffing and panting (and Laura feeling a little pukey after being given an energy sweet by Bets, who told her it would make her feel better! NB. it didn't.) And then we were faced with what seemed like ENDLESS steps. Memories came flooding back of the sweat and pain we experienced when climbing Cerro Chatto in Costa Rica! Arrrrrggghhhh.....

However, once we were up and our heart rates had resumed to a normal pace, we could take in the spectacular views all around us.

Walking across the plain

Beautiful turquoise pools

Mount doom!

We stopped for lunch right on the edge of the red crater, which was literally bright red rock, and got invaded by lots of ladybirds (who knew ladybirds could live at the top of a volcano?!?)

Betty about to jump! The walk had got too hard!

Laura's first attempt of skiing (plenty of bum landings!!)

See, we've had snow too!

We returned home feeling exhausted but it was "totally worth it!" (gap yaaah!) and to soften the blow we stayed at a really nice lodge (ski resort stylee) with a big log fire and comfy sofas and our friends Gems, Sid and Chris and enjoyed a relaxed movie night, courtesy of Gem's laptop. (If anyone hasn't seen Julie and Julia, it is definitely worth seeing!) The amazing views of Tongariro and Mount Doom will definitely always stay with us as typical memories of New Zealand.

Time for tea!

We headed to the airport feeling excited about heading to our new home land, but strangely sad to be leaving this one of a kind place. We have had an incredible time here, not only the places that we have been and the activities that we have done (there were LOTS) but the really fun and interesting people that we got to share (and sometimes were forced to share!) our travels with. We already have a list of places that we want to come back to as we definitely didn't have enough time to fit everything in!

The only disappointment.....we didn't see a kiwi. (Obviously we're talking about the bird people!!!)

New Zealand....DONE.

Now for the adventure to really begin and our new life down under!!!

Lots of hot sunny kisses from Oz xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

written by  coopsandbets on February 12, 2011 from Sydney, Australia
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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With only a few weeks before Christmas, we decided to make the most of it, by embarking on an exciting road trip along the Great Ocean Road! Oh yeh baby!!

There were delightful views as we reached some of the more rugged coastal spots, where it was perfect surfer stalking conditions. We pulled up and ate our yummy posh Alain treats with cameras in hand and lots of "oooh...ahhh...did you see that one?!?"

We had to stop by the famous Anglesea golf course - to check out the resident skippy kangaroos!! Seriously, they just chill out there while there are balls flying everywhere (hehehe!)

Our most exciting discovery, which we had not been prepared for....was to see the most famous lighthouse of our childhoods. You all know it guys....
"Have you ever, ever felt like this? How strange things happen...Are you going round the twist?!?!" Woop woop!

Lorne was a tres cute beachside town, where we induldged in a Cold Rock icecream (they mix it up on a marble slab for you!) and loitered weirdly by a wedding on the beach, because we thought it looked pretty and they had champagne!

Our first night was spent in the very quiet town of Apollo Bay, where our cheap accommodation was a little worse than expected, when we pulled up into a make-shift garage and literally just had to walk through a door into our dorm room that was actually the old garage. Inside was exposed brick walls and a green glowing fire exit sign above Coops' bed (don't worry it was covered by a jumper!) and a token chinese man living there for good measure?!?!

Day two was a busy day filled with some well known spots along the 'Shipwreck' coast - 12 apostles, Loch Ard Gorge and London Bridge (an arc formed by the sea that when it collapsed left two people ((who were apparently having an affair)) deserted on the stack, only to be rescued by helicopter, haha!) We read this on our surprisingly long trek around the different sites of this bay, where Letty learnt her one fundamental lesson of Australia 'slip, slap, slop!' and Coops hasn't let her forget it!

This was our most sight-filled day as everytime we set off to our next designated stop, we would see one of the little brown tourist signs telling us there was "500m to a....waterfall/scenic lookout/beach or any kind of rock formation" and obviously we didn't hesitate to pull in at every opportunity!

Our second night's accommodation, in Port Fairy, was one that we hoped would be better than the previous due to it being a YHA. Turns out we were wrong. It was a bit like a prison cell, with children sized bunk beds attached to the (again exposed brick) wall and only a paper thin wall between us and the 'dorm' next to us! It's fun listening to Swedish music. We did venture out to the local pub, where we had a bevvie with the locals staring at us!

On route to our abode for the night, with many wrong turns due to us not really knowing where we were going and Bets saying "oh, let's try up here!" we drove through the quaint mountain town of Hall's Gap, where all the other tourists sensibly decided to spend their night. But no no no...not for us, we like to live it up, off the beaten track! So we found ourselves a lodge in Brimpean. Well...what an experience. Firstly, we pulled up to a working farm, with quad bike tracks (naturally they go together) and a completely deserted set of lodges. Coops was sent to find the farmer and accidentally stumbled across his 18 year old son's work out session in one of the barns.....sounds awkward...it was. He was shirtless....enough said! We finally got into our lodge, which, even though there was noone else staying there, he still put us in the one furthest away from the main building, which is a treat when it is dark and there is only Bets' head-torch for guidance! Not scary at all! Due to our roughing-it, we spent a good half an hour checking behind doors and in our beds for any creepy crawlies...luckily none to be found there! However, there was a whole array of spiders in the outdoor kitchen, which essentially was a couple of camp stoves in an army style mess. Gross! We were glad to survive the night there but were happy to have our free breakfast and head off onto our voyage to Adelaide!

After people telling us there was nothing to do in Adelaide, we actually enjoyed wandering around this nice city. There's lots of old school parliament buildings and we went to visit Ayer's House, where we learnt lots about Australia's history. The sun was shining, the shops were good and we visited another large market for lunchtime!

Betty offered to lend us her little car (we had ditched the rental by this point) so that we could explore a bit further afield and the South Australian hills. We had a lovely road trip around the Fleurieu Peninsula - lots more beautiful beaches and then a cheeky stop at the renowned vineyards!

We finished off with an overnight bus trip back to Melbs where we experienced the incredible Greyhound, filled with bogan families readily dressed in their pyjamas at 5pm! Oh what a joy!

Christmas in Australia...here we come! (Ho ho ho!!!)

Thinking of you all, as always

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written by  coopsandbets on May 6, 2011 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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But don't worry, we made sure that we explored lots of Melbourne too! In particular one rainy day was spent on a hop on hop off sightseeing bus, that we couldn't be bothered to get off, so happily went around all the main sights and looked at them all from a distance!!! At a later time, we did go and look a bit closer up, for example the Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens.

Our main Melbourne tour-guide was Alain (please make sure you say this in a french accent) who is Coops' English friend who has shacked up with an aussie sheila so that he can stay here forever (Bastard!) He took us to all the cool places, like all of the amazing 'laneways' which are filled with super cool little cafes, shops and bars.

But come Wednesday night, it changes into more of a Greenwich style market, with a whole load of clothes and accessories as well as cooked food stalls, for your munching pleasure! It was quite a military operation on our first visitation, to make sure that we made an informed decision on what to eat! After walking the entire length of the available stall options, only then could we decide what we would have! You may be interested to know Coops went for an African Style curry and Bets had some delicious noodles out of a giant wok! Coops made a rash decision on the dessert front, with a homemade cupcake, only to get food envy when Bets rolled up with her crepe filled with banana, icecream and chocolate sauce! So naturally, she thought 'to hell with it' and got one too! (Mixed berries, icecream and chocolate!) Again, she has not quite lived down Alain's abuse about her being a fat pie!

We were also very pleased that some of our New Zealand homies (Gemma, Mara and Kriss) were in Australia at this time as well...so we made sure that we met up with all of them for fun times! Gemma's b'day was the highlight with us all going to the market and then a fun night out on the tiles!

There were more investigations of other cool areas around Melbourne. Like Richmond, where Claire (on our second night in Australia) kindly took us on a night out with some her friends and she introduced us to the delights of crust pizza!! (It's like Fire&Stone in London). Brunswick street was another cool area, where we wandered around some of the charity shops by day and then picked up a bottle of wine from the 'liquor store' to drink it at the bar next door, by night. And unknowingly, an aussie celeb was sat next to us with her friends, who we later found out was Ruby Rose, a 'celesbian!' (Celebrity lesbian, obviously!)

St kilda is very popular with the backpackers, so we went for a mosey around the shops and the beach side market, where we both bought new rings made of cutlery! And on a windy walk out along the pier we discovered a little pinguino! There are also some nice restaurants, which we sampled a couple of and wandered through the nearby streets with Alain, checking out the cute little terraced houses, wondering which one we could live in! We tapped some amazing cake places for dessert too!

Chapel street is the place to be seen, with half cool little 'op shops' and the other some pretty swanky places like Louis Vuitton! (Sadly our budget restricted us to one end!) We had a nice, sunny, shopping day here helping Gems look for a pretty dress for her bday!

It was on one of these occasions that Letty spotted a blowfish that had been washed up onto the beach and attempted to rescue it, by tentatively kicking it back it into the sea! Sadly, it did not pull through and Coops still claims that Bets killed it! We also saw a hilarious game of football on the beach by 3 santas!

As Christmas quickly approached, we decided we needed to make some preparations to get ourselves into the Christmas mood (due to the lack of festive spirit in Australia...unimpressed!) We decided to go to the largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere, Chadstone, for our secret santas! We had a 'supermarket sweep' style dash around after we had set a budget and wished each other good luck (amongst the heaving crowds!) We also indulged ourselves in a cheeky mince pie! We then keenly wrapped up our goodies and put them under the tree....aka, Laura's backpack!

It really didn't feel like Christmas, particularly because of the hot weather and being away from home, so needless to say it was interesting! Especially when Christmas dinner consisted of a huge seafood platter instead of turkey! We were brave enough to try an oyster for the first time, but...let's just say it didn't go down well!

Christmas went past very quickly and we were soon frantically making arrangements for our long awaited New Year's in Sydney! We couldn't wait!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS everybody!!! (It's only 5 months late!!!)

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written by  coopsandbets on May 7, 2011 from Melbourne, Australia
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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Our last day in Melbs was spent with Alain in the glorious sunshine with a lovely luncheon overlooking Brighton beach and then some explorations around the city in the car to see a few places we'd missed off the list - like driving along the Formula 1 track!! Sweeeet! Then in the evening we met his lovely fiance (now wife) Kerry for drinks and the most anxious and rushed dinner as all of a sudden we realised that we actually had very little time to catch our very important overnight bus. Once we had inhaled our food, and sent Kerry to go pick up the car that we'd left all our worldy belongings in, we headed there separately so that we could at least make sure we were checked in in-time and stop the bus from leaving without us. Whilst waiting for a tram, the reality actually sunk in and Coops' words "are we getting to the stage where we should really be thinking about getting a taxi??" were followed by an incredibly speedy agreement from Alain as he threw himself in front of the nearest taxshi-keb! Our panic was not over, when we then arrived at the bus station (the bus was still there thank god!) but Kerry and our bags were nowhere to be seen! We all stood in complete silence on the street corner, before Alain started running up and down the street trying to call her and flagging down any car that could possibly resemble theirs! With minutes to spare she did a swerving u-turn up to the kerb and we grabbed everything ("make sure you don't forget the cookies!!!!!!") and ran (more like hobbled!) inside blowing kisses and thank yous as we went! Only to find out we had been given a seat number that didn't actual exist - clearly they employ very intelligent bus drivers - luckily this meant that we did have a seat, but it was the ones that don't recline and are next to the stinky toilet - great. Adding to this, at about midnight Coops discovered cockroaches down the side of her seat and definitely couldn't get comfortable after that!!

Paula was super lovely and for the first few days we actually didn't see that much of her so kept communicating by a series of notes left out on the kitchen table. After we had bonded, she kindly offered to take us on a day trip up through the Northern Beaches...finishing in the most famous beach of all.....SUMMER BAY!!!!

Sadly they were not filming that day, so we will have to wait and see if we meet our future husbands later on.... But we had all the necessary photo opportunities in front of the surfclub and the lifesavers buggy (and slightly unfortunately picked up a parking ticket whilst we were doing so....Sorry Paula!) All of the beaches are really lush with really golden sand and there are some pretty swanky houses up there, looking out over the sea. Manly itself is really lovely and Bets remembered lots of happy memories from being here before. (Even though she took quite a while to work out why the beach looked so different - turns out theres a beach on both sides!!)

So the end of 2010 was nigh and we awoke on New Years Eve to a beautiful, hot day and obviously had to stock up on all the necessary picnic delights to take down to the harbour to watch the fireworks. Our initial plans were to meet up with Gemma and her friends, (yes Gems is now in Sydney too!) in a spot they had bagsied near Luna Park on the north shore! However, after the nightmares of public transport, NYE road closures and the threat of having our alcohol taken off us, we got sidetracked and found our own little spot.

We settled down with our picnic in a very cute little bay, with lots of other families and young peeps and tucked in to our goodies and poured ourselves some goon goodness from its very subtle hiding spot inside the cold bag!! Every time a policeman walked past we pooed ourselves slightly and tried unsuccessfully to 'play it cool!' After drinking games for two and getting rid of some of the weight in the food bag, we ventured around the bay to try and meet Gems. We then got side-tracked again by some Swedish guys and girls we had met earlier on in our bus adventures and were lured into their party pack. This was the beginning of the end as we managed to finish a 5 litre box of wine and nearly a whole bottle of vodka - eek! Whilst mingling, we managed to lose each other on more than one occasion, but had a great time anyway and met lots of fun people! And luckily we managed to re-convene with only minutes to spare before the countdown!

All of a sudden the sky was lit up and we turned to each other with huge grins on our faces, squealing "oh my god....we're actually here!!" The next fifteen minutes was spent, faces upwards, necks aching, but completely mesmerised by all the different types of fireworks and the typical ooohhs and ahhhhs that accompanied them! It was awesome. The night continued into the small hours with lots of joviality. We did meet up with Gems eventually - turns out she had only been about 10 metres away from us the whole time - after we found a ridiculous number of missed calls and drunken voicemails on our phones, oops! There was a very long bus journey back to Manly and you could say we were a little inebriated when we got off the bus and walked in completely the wrong direction home!!!

2011 was definitely off to a good start - we couldn't believe we were actually living in Australia - WOOOOOOO!!! Lots of exciting adventures ahead.....

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written by  coopsandbets on May 14, 2011 from Sydney, Australia
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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