We went for a small tour of invercargill in our wee Nissan tiida. We got Georgia a swim suit so she can go in the ocean!

Then we packed a few things and headed to colac bay for the night.

When we got there the weather was scorching so we had a beer and sat in the sun for a bit.

Oh and Des and Annmarie grow strawberries on their greenhouse and they were delicious🤤(queue the instagram photo 😂)

Then we went to gemstone beach for a look. All the pebbles on the beach are semi precious stones (hence the name).

Then after that we sunbathed some more and went for a bit of a swim, although for Georgia it was just a walk in the ocean. Next time we are back we will take the surfing lessons that happen in this beach. We regretted not doing even a couple of hours of lessons since we were there.

Overall it was a really chilled day at the beach, resulting in a lot of sun burn for both of us.

Day 0.5 – stop: Qatar:

After flying for 3.5 hours from Cyprus to Qatar for a 9 hour waiting for our next flight, we decided to sign up for a transit tour in Doha. The tour was really interesting. From the airport to the city of Doha , you can see colourful lights that on their posts they have written the national anthem. Doha is full of architectural creations of famous people. This is the ‘burka lady’, it’s the museum of Islamic arts, if you cant’ tell it’s shaped lake woman’s face in Hijab and Bourka.

We were really surprised with the amount of wealth that is spread around the different parts of the city. This means fancy skyscrapers in the business district, bentleys and porches driving around, or the perl (a man made island).

(Random fact alert: the car license plates in Qatar (excluding taxis) tell you about who the car belongs to and what it’s used for; black ones, the car belongs to a company, grey ones the car is a taxi, and white ones are privately owned cars. On private cars there is further classifications: 3 numbers mean that this car belongs to the royal family, 4 numbers are up for bidding so what this essentially means is that these cars belong to wealthy peeps. And above 4 numbers is everyone else. Anw enough about Qatar. We jumped on the second flight which was a 16 hour and 40 minute flight to Auckland.

Day ‘i have zero sense if it was 27 or 28’:

The flight was so tiring, the plane was full. Dan and i managed to get a bit of sleep and unfortunately every time i slept for 10mins i missed a meal. So i ended up eating just 2 meals for 17 hours. Ah and guess what, a charlie (half cypriot – half british) was sitting next to me(we are bloody everywhere😂🤦🏻‍♀️).

Day 1(the real thing)

I’m definitely sure now its the 28th and we arrived in Auckland at around 5am. Passport control, check. Biosecurity check, check(all the watching of Australian, uk, Canada border came in use😂) random fact: NZ(New Zealand) has very ‘strict’ rules about biosecurity. They are not allowing in any honey products and they also make sure that ur hiking shoes/equipment doesn’t have any soil on them in order to prevent bringing bacteria in the country. You have to pretty much declare everything except clothing. I managed to sneak in baklava( which clearly stated on the box that it has honey. The officer clearly likes baklava, since i told him that it has honey and he still let it through). ‘Strict biosecurity’.

Anyway, we caught the domestic flight to Queenstown and fyi the safety instructions in air New Zealand are provided like this lol.

The scenery from the flight it was stunning. The pilot had to circle around mountains in order to land. We were sooo near at the peaks.

Landed in Queenstown and i have to say we were really lucky. The weather was really nice, full on sun but with a light cold breeze. I was acting like a 5 year old baby that you gave it a kilo of ice cream. Everything seemed sooo nice and new. We got the rental car and we made our way to Invercargill. The wakatipu lake drive was stunning. Clear blue(apparently freezing though) water and majestic mountains on the other side.

Arrived in Invercargill( Dans hometown) and i soon realised that the houses don’t look anything like the UK or Cyprus. They are usually one floor, with big yards on front and on the back.

After getting some rest we drove to Bluff which is basically a tiny town that has a hill with amazing views. The day was so clear, we could see Stewart island(its the only place in NZ that you can see kiwi outside in the wild).

After Bluff we drove to Oreti beach, but didn’t bring togs after Georgias complaining about the cold water. However when we got there the water was fine, and we were full of regret… 😦

Then we drove through the middle of Invercargill and stopped at the old (closed) museum and had a look at the tuataras (really old lizards) through the windows.

Then we headed back home and the time was around 5 and i made the mistake to fall asleep just after 6. I woke up at 11:30p.m and the time is 1:30 a.m and I’m writing this blog. As you understand jet-lag is not a myth lol. Anyway heading back to bed. See ya tomorrow.