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Published: December 14th 2010
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Sky TowerAfter a relatively quiet first month back in Auckland, we decided to make up for it during the following 5 weeks. This is our story...
We’d settled back into the working routine, although our body clocks were still finding it a little unusual not starting work till 3pm and not getting back from work till gone 9pm. During this week Cerri managed to make it onto the Captains leaderboard by earning over a $1000 in a week, this meant she would go down in history as the first lady to ever do so in the history of “The Trusty Delivery Company. Also on the work front, myself and Sean actually knocked on the Prime Minister of New Zealand’s home in Auckland. We spoke to his wife who was a lovely lady, she did accuse Sean of being English which I found hilarious Sean not so much! Sadly we didn’t get a sale out of her, as she sacked us off on credit card details!
So with a week of work out of the way, we decided to visit Kelly Taltons Aquarium on the weekend. We headed for the Sky Tower to get a ride in the complementary bus, which
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Milkmen at Huka Falls wasn’t just any bus as it was shaped like a shark, teeth and all! Arriving at the cave like entrance to Kelly Taltons, we hopped off the bus and ventured in. Now this place was not only an aquarium but it also housed my favourite animal, those little tuxedo wearing chaps the Penguin. The place was split up into 3 areas, the Penguin / Antarctica area, the Shark and Stingray underwater tunnel and the Tropical fish exhibits. We went on the Antarctica express which took us into the penguin enclosure, so you could get up close and personal with them, before walking through the underwater tunnel watching the vast amount of sharks and sting rays swimming above us, then onto watching the feeding time for the stingrays and other tropical fish, ending with a obligatory photo of the group stuck inside the jaws of a great white shark! From Kelly Taltons we headed to Mission bay for a fishermans basket, you name any fish and it was deep fried and put in front of us, Cerri on the other hand with the slogan “fish are friends NOT food” opted for a chicken burger! With our bellies stuffed, we opted to
work off the calories and headed to the nearby Crazy golf course (I’ve lost count how many times we’ve played crazy golf since we’ve been away!). We battled it out in teams with myself, Cerri and Jesse scoring many whole in ones and taking the trophy easily from other team consisting of Colin, Kaja and Pav Man aka Nick.
During the week we had two reunions, the first with the Welshies who were back in Auckland after completing their Kiwi Experience round trip. They came up to the flat for a couple of beers and to watch the rugby match between the All Blacks and Australia before they made their way to the airport to fly out to Melbourne, which is where we will see them next. The other reunion was with Claire, who I worked with at NZ Tax Refunds. Her husband to be was over visiting from the UK, as they are getting married in Malvern (Wheeler, I’ll try and get you an invite!) next year. We met up for a drink down in the viaduct for a good catch up and again to watch another rugby match!
With a couple of weeks behind us we
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My first prawn! planned a little road trip for some of our fellow work colleagues. We decided to hire a couple of cars between us and head down to one of our favourite places we visited with the Caravan Club, the town of Taupo. Our reasoning behind picking Taupo was not only because of the beautiful lake but I also wanted another go at visiting the prawn farm and catching one of those bloody prawns! We drove down early on the Saturday morning and arrived in time for a spot of lunch with a cheeky beer; from here we head to Liquor King to pick up supplies for the day mainly those of the alcoholic variety. We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the park, making the most of the sunshine whilst I introduced the football game “one touch, one bounce” (Biarritz boys will remember it well!) and Cerri attempted to teach the girls some gymnastics. Before we knew it the evening was upon us, so carrying on in the same vain we headed out to a couple of bars and danced the night away where Cerri had her photo taken with another Fat Joe lookalike sporting an “I’m in Taupo
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The T-shirt says it all! Bitch” T-shirt! This was then followed by the drunken munchies at Burger King, a good night was had by all! The next morning we ventured out to the “Friends” Cafe for a spot of Breakfast, before heading back to Huka Prawn Farm where I didn’t even catch a cold the first time! We arrived at the Prawn Farm a bit late, so late in fact we only had an hour and a half to try and catch as many of the little buggers as we could. As the saying goes, “there’s strength in numbers”, so I was relatively confident that we would be able to catch a fair amount. With that Colin landed his first prawn soon followed by Meghan, the next hour or so continued in a successful streak with myself bagging 5 (yes that’s right 5!) prawns. The Leader board looked a bit like this...
Ben & Meghan – 5
Kaja& Chris – 3
Cassidy – 2
Colin & Jesse – 1
Cerri & Sean – 0 (Sorry Cerri your previous luck wasn’t with you this time!)
Once again the restaurant cooked the prawns beautifully in garlic butter before they were devoured by the band of
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Would have made a great 5-a-side team! Trusty Milkmen. We then headed to our favourite supermarket Pak ‘n’ Save to pick up some bits and pieces, as the hostel we were staying in had a BBQ on the roof terrace. After stocking up on burgers and sausages we headed back to the park for another game of “one touch, one bounce” or its new name “Prawn!” to work up an appetite, whilst the ladies took it upon themselves to take charge of the BBQ proceedings. With that our week end in Taupo was over, as we had to drive back to Auckland for work the following morning or in Cerri’s case surgery on her toe!!!
After our drive back to Taupo as the Milkman gang got ready for a day’s work we waved off Cerri at the City Medical Centre as she was preparing for her operation – Cerri was a little nervous but the lovely Doctors and Nurses at the centre reassured her before “Operation Toe Job” commenced! Cerri did try to get pictures of the undergoing procedure but due to the operation room being sterile she wasn’t able to take the camera in . . . although the pain she went under as the
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Couples Combo in the Sky Tower five injections of anaestic went into her toe she didn’t have any hands free to take any pictures as she was holding the nurses hand and biting her lip. She says to imagine 1000 bee stings and an open cut with someone pouring lemon juice on it all happening at once and you’ll get a picture of the pain! After a little wait and pain free her toe was completely numb. The Doctor then took out a rubber glove which Cerri thought he was going to wear but to her surprise tied it around the bottom of her toe very tightly to stop to the blood flowing, with the her toe dead to the world and looking a funny white/grey colour the removing of the toenail commenced; the Doctor then presented a lovely pair of pliers and got stuck in. The nail proved more tougher than first thought and it took a few attempts to pull it off, resulting in Cerri being in quite a bit pain and then offered more anaestic injections in which she quickly declined and said “just yank it off!” and with that fainted! When Cerri woke up she was offered the traditional British way a
cup of tea to get over her trauma and was also minus one toenail, after a little rest and recuperation Cerri was in a taxi on the way back to the flat with a bucket full of heavy duty pain killers and a heavily bandaged toe. She had a hard week lying in bed watching movies and resting her toe whilst I went out earning the pennies!
The penultimate week in New Zealand ended with an epic few days, starting off with our last day in work which involved myself and Steve shaving our beards into moustaches in support of the Charity Movember whilst Cerri and Cassidy spent the majority of their day playing on the children’s swings in the park! With work over with the following day Colin, our housemate Chris, Cassidy, Cerri and myself had tickets to the Jay-Z and U2 concert at the Mount Smart Stadium, as it was a roasting hot day we all decided to go out for lunch followed by a few cold Isaac’s Ciders to cool down. We hopped on the free bus that Auckland City had provided for the concert and made our way to the stadium. Now the only reason
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Hammer Toe! we’d decided to go the gig was because we’d spotted cheap tickets, $40 each to be precise (about £20 each!) which we thought was bloody good value considering we would be watching two of the world biggest musical acts. We arrived at the stadium and went our separate ways from Colin, Chris & Cassidy as they had standing tickets and we had seats due to Cerri’s toe! Jay-Z was first up belting out some of his anthems and was joined on stage by another rapper by the name of Mephis Bleek. We even spotted his Mrs the lovely Beyonce in a box not far from our seats, having a good boogie! After Jay-Z rapped up (excuse the pun!), Bono and his boys graced the stage. The Concert was called “the 360 tour” as the stage was set in the middle of the stadium and it had an outer platform which the band were able to walk round right into the crows, to get everybody going. Before going to the concert we weren’t too sure how many U2 songs we’d know but we found ourselves singing along to the majority of them. The light show was pretty spectacular, as the stage
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Help a Bro, Grow a Mo! resembled some sort of space craft with strange lights and effects to match. We had a really enjoyable evening, although Bono brought the crowd down a bit by preaching a little too much about his charity work whilst plugging Amnesty International, which is not a bad thing but it wasn’t what you wanted to hear after head banging to Vertigo!
With the concert over the next day consisted in celebrating an American holiday, working with two American’s namely sisters Meghan and Claire it was only right that we celebrated thanks giving with them. We all chipped in to buy the food, which turned out to be a feast! Thanks Giving is normally celebrated on a Thursday but due to the fact that we were all working that day, we had it for lunch on the Saturday. In true 1950’s style the women took over the kitchen to take charge over the cooking proceedings, although my help was needed with the mash potato but as we didn’t have a masher I spent the next 40 minutes using a fork! Along with lunch Canadian Cassidy (who bakes the best cookies!) and Meghan made some egg nogg especially for Cerri as she’d
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View from Balcony never had it before and really wanted to try some after watching her all time favourite programme “Friends” and living a child hood dream. With our stomachs full and all of us wearing our “thanksgiving pants” in order to breathe we settled down with many beers and good old trashy tv in true Thanks Giving style!
The Sunday was a really hot day, the kind where there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Not the usual weather you’d find yourself watching a Santa Parade back home in the UK. We had purchased a couple of festive head wear for the occasion, Cerri with the usual Santa Hat and myself with the reindeer antlers! The rest of the trusty gang followed suit getting in the Christmas spirit. We found ourselves a good spot mid way down Queen Street and set up camp for the day. We saw all kinds of floats and inflatable objects make their way down the street and in front of us, with highlights being a Mr Potato Head, a Giant Kiwi bird complete with santa hat wearing jandals, a traditional snowman and the main man himself Santa of course!
Our final day in Auckland, we
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View from Sky Tower decided after staring at the Sky Tower for the past two months that we would eventually go up it. In the morning we went and watched Jesse & Kaja do a bungy jump off the harbour bridge, which they had won as part of an incentive at work, afterwards we got dropped off at the city centre and made our way to the Sky Tower. Once we’d arrived we purchased our tickets, jumped into the lift and started our ascent up to the first observation deck some 186 metres above the ground below. It was a sunny day with clear blue skies, which made the view of Auckland from way up there pretty spectacular, we even braved standing on the glass floor blocks to see the people looking like ants below us. Not content with that we opted to go that little bit higher and jumped into another lift. This lift took us up to the sky deck some 220 metres above the ground where the views were even better, we even managed to pick out our flat in the distance! When we got our feet firmly back on the ground, we headed back up to the flat to start
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Couples Combo at the Santa Parade the dreaded packing of the bags. On our way back we bumped into Pav Man and elected to go for a spot of lunch with him, so instead of a last supper it was a last lunch with our fellow milkman! With the last lunch behind us we ventured up the steep Queen Street for the very last time as the following day we would leave New Zealand for good to continue on our little adventure...
Ben & Cerri's Tip of the Month - Everyone should celebrate Thanks Giving, its a great excuse to eat and drink plenty!
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Claire
non-member comment
Awesome pic! Love it :-) Great blog guys, sounds like you had a blast in Auckland, cant wait to hear all about Samoa! Take care xx