Adventures of the Black girls Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow - what a Ride!

Hi everyone! We left off in Airlie Beach, reporting that our Whitsunday sailing trip had been cancelled.  We spent the night in Airlie beach, hoping conditions would improve... but ended up heading north to Townsville the next morning.  Our bus stopped overnight in Townsville, so we spent the day shopping, going to movies, and avoiding the rain.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to catch our bus to Cairns, only to find out that no busses were running between Townsville and Cairns for at least a couple days!! The paper reported that this is the worst flooding Northern Australia has seen in 30 years... some people woke up to over 2 meters of rain in their houses!!! It didn't look like we were going to be able to bus to Cairns anytime soon, so we followed some other travellers to the local airport, to see what our options were for the next week to avoid the storm. We tossed around some ideas of flying to Fiji, or Perth, or... anywhere but there! Our airline said that, due to the weather, they would bump up our flight a week early and fly us to New Zealand within the next couple hours for no extra cost, so that's exactly what we did.

We flew from Townsville to Sydney and had a 3 hour layover in Sydney. What we didn't realize, is that our plane had landed in the domestic terminal, and we needed to be in the international terminal, which is a bus ride away! Let's just say we made it with about 30 seconds to spare before our plane took off. Yikes!! We landed in Christchurch, New Zealand, at about 1 in the morning and checked into the airport hotel for a nice hot shower and a good night's sleep.

Wednesday morning, we had breakfast (more like lunch, by the time we got up...) and rented ourselves a sweet ride for the week. Ride meaning, a small purple bubble car... it's pretty awesome. We checked ourselves into the Casino Court motel, and spent the rest of the day running errands and watching tv, for the first time in awhile!

Today, we slept in, went for a big run, and had a nice healthy breakfast... trying to get ourselves back on track since we fell off the healthy boat in Australia. The rest of the day was spent shopping, walking around Cathedral Square, and taking a 49-km scenic drive along the mountains and by the ocean. Some of the views were amazing. We even saw some wild sheep roaming on the mountains. Today, we also had to go and buy ourselves light jackets, as New Zealand is a lot more like Canada's weather, with cooler nights and less humid days.

Our plan for the next few days while we wait for Melissa to fly in on Monday, is to head up to Hamner Springs for a luxurious Girl's spa weekend. We figure we deserve it after all of our awesome tours were cancelled and we spent a week in the stupid rain. Hopefully we'll have an update soon! Just wanted to let everyone know where we're at, since we're in a completely different country than planned! We're already both completely in love with New Zealand, and have decided if we HAVE to fall in love and move anywhere, it'll be here!!!

Bye from New Zealand!!

- Kristin & Tanis!