new zealand travel insurance

Up until then, I had it made. I'd pick my destination and dates, email the Hilton Hippy, and within a few hours I'd have a complete set of flight options, at the lowest possible price, plus a massively discounted travel insurance policy, visa information ... the works.

Sadly, the Hippy has now passed on to the corporate world (although he can still hook a brother up with cheap flights), so organising a holiday takes a bit more work.

Still, it's easily manageable without the help (and expense) of a travel agent. Which kinda makes me wonder: are they a dying breed?

Photo credit: Chris Hocking

Miss Snow It All loves this time of year and not just for the spring skiing on blue bird days in a t-shirt. When one season ends it's time to plan the other and after a ripping season in Oz the powder bug will be itching beneath the skin of addicts crying out for more.

Folks north of the equator are also crying with glee at the dip in temperatures signifying winter is on it's way. Soon enough those in London will be filling the hallowed Olympia Halls for the annual

Tash and I have just emerged from some wild country.

We have travelled over 1000 kilometres of corrugated red roads. We've hiked over boulders to reach secluded watering holes, and sat in rock pools heated by underwater springs. After some long treks in the desert sun, we've dived into joltingly cold swimming holes and then warmed ourselves up again under waterfalls that splash warm water (the streams run over black rocks that are heated in the sun!).

We've been deep-sea fishing and fed a campground with our catch - a 60 pound black dhufish, a handful of saddle back sea perch and then there were all those ones we threw back into the ocean - javelin fish, reef sharks and queen fish. Tash shone silver with fish scales after her lessons in scaling, gutting and filleting our catch.

We've slept in our swags every night (that's a pic of our campsite at Kalumburu). We've given up trying to keep the dirt from under our finger nails and accepted the brown-grey tinge of our clothes. We've washed in the ocean and under waterfalls more often than we've had showers. We've learnt to ignore the bone-jarring bounce of the road, or, when it gets really bad, to just laugh along with it. And we've become adept at throwing our swags out the back of the Troopie, sparking up our campfire with a handful of Spinifex (they call it "kerosene grass" up here) and pan-frying our fish or, in duller moments, heating up a tin of baked beans.

We've been blissfully disconnected from the outside world - no mobile range or internet for days on end.

And we've discovered that two chicks travelling in a 4WD along the Gibb River Road is entirely unusual.

The place has got pretty much anything you could want in a travel destination, save for maybe some snow.

For starters, it's extremely affordable, particularly now with the number of budget carriers flying there. And when you're there, things range from the cheap (Malaysia, Singapore), to the really cheap (Thailand), to the extremely cheap (Vietnam), to the ridiculously cheap (Cambodia) to the I'm-living-like-a-king-on-the-cost-of-a-packet-of-chips-a-day cheap (Laos).

There's also great shopping in places like KL, Hanoi and Bangkok, beautiful beaches pretty much anywhere you go, culture that's taken thousands and thousands of years to build up, some of the best food in the world, friendly people, a warm climate, a unique experience ... and did I mention it's cheap?

So if you haven't been there, you should. And you should do it soon. Because (cue the Sith music from Star Wars), things there are about to change.

Contiki's coming to town.

Extreme skiers Chris Davenport and Shane McConkey go surfing during a storm in Portillo

Who can trust a snow report? There's more spin in the world of snow than the US Presidential Election.

Savvy skiers and boarders collect and collate their own data from a variety of resources including friends at the snow, webcams and online communities. It's foolish to jump in the car and make a weekend trek to the snow without doing your research and even more foolish to book an overseas ski trip without getting your facts straight.

Miss Snow It All knows the world of media is filled with smoke and reflected with mirrors and she knows she prefers it shot from the hip. To help you make your all important snow decisions from what to buy to where to stay to when to go she's collated her top ten snow websites for north and south.

Read on ...