Christmas!

I hope everybody is having/had a wonderful Christmas, mine was great. I spent it with Amy and her family:Then I got a really cool present, a new car!
pretty awesome, right?

Wellington's beaches

Amy and I went for a drive yesterday around some of the beachier suburbs of Wellington: Scorching Bay, Island Bay, Lyle Bay, etc... We saw the boat from King Kong rusting in the harbor near the airport and lots of beautiful blue water.

The island of Island Bay fame:This is right behind the airport, you can see a plane coming in for a landing:

This is Wellington as viewed from out past the airport:
Some cool swimming platforms for diving in the bay, we wished we had brought our "togs":

Hiking

On the way back to Auckland I stopped a couple places and did some hiking at Whangarei Falls and in the hills above Paihia.

Cruisin in the Bay of Islands

While I was in the Bay of Islands I went on an overnight cruise of the islands. We went fishing, snorkeling, had a shooting competition, kayaking at night in bio luminescent algae, and generally had a great time.

This is "The Rock", our boat:

Russell, Bay of Islands

This is Russell in the Bay of Islands. Sure, it may look like a picturesque, sleepy little beach town now, but apparently it used to be known as the "Hell Hole of the Pacific".

Paihia, Bay of Islands

This is beautiful Paihia in the Bay of Islands. It's the most touristy place I've been to in New Zealand but it avoids feeling like a cookie cutter tourist trap beach town.

On the road...

After a couple weeks of working hard I decided to rent a car and drive up to the Bay of Islands about 3.5 hours north of Auckland.

These are a couple more shots I took while working in Auckland:

Welcome!

Welcome to my new website! Same address, different code.

It was taking too long to port all my previous posts to this new format so I've decided to just leave them where they are, if you want to see any of my previous posts please visit: http://isgrassgreener.tumblr.com

If you have any questions or comments please let me know in the comments section of the relevant post or through email which you will find listed on the right side of the page under "Links"