North Island winter odyssey in a fascist car

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Just before we left, i had dinner with my great friends Sarah Cox and Anna Holman. Sarah's husband, Richard, asked me about the approaching trip and i was more than happy to describe all our exciting plans. Afterwards Richard, who is from Yorkshire and has higher sarcasm levels than most, was silent for a few seconds and then concluded " so basically you are following winter around the world". I laughted it off at the time, but I'm afraid that Richard (and it pains me to say this) was right!

Winter is definitely here in New Zealand. We know this by the extraordinarily large amounts of water which have been leaving the sky since the moment we arrived here 10 days ago. Literally every hour!!! However we are British and rain or no rain our spirits remain undampened... at the very least to be able to speak English and eat Hummus again is a delight.

New Zealand is unbelievably beautiful, even considering the weather, probably one of the most wonderful looking places we have ever seen. We have got to the stage where we have become almost blase about the staggering countryside we visit - another vast, empty, white sandy beach; another picture postcard, green velvet covered hill; another charming, peaceful bay. It is breathtaking....

What's more - everything works and everyone is incredibly pleasant and friendly - it seems that nothing is too much trouble. Every place we have stayed in has been spotless, large and comfortable and it is just so easy to get around and do stuff. However we do have a couple of problems...

Firstly, our car is a fascist!! And we thought all the fascists were hiding in South America (joke), actually they have morphed into cheap, Japanese hire cars!! An extraordinary claim we know but we have evidence: 1. It beeps at you, very loudly, if you don't put your seatbelt on within 2 seconds of starting the car. 2. It beeps at you again, very loudly, if you hit the speed limit (many issues with this particularly) until you slow down again (we must have hit this about 100 times already). 3. It doesn't like soul music, it won't play Nige's cd properly. We are beginning to feel very intimidated by our car and thankfully are handing it back when we leave the north island tomorrow - good riddance.

Our second problem is that we don't have enough time here in New Zealand to really see and do everything we want to.. at the moment lots of time is spent on the road (listening to bleeps). We get to places and really only have a cursory look round before we have to get going again. We have actually seen a fair bit of the North Island, though not in any depth.

Visited places, in order, include:

Auckland (lovely city, Auckland museum sensational - sky tower and Auckland terrain v impressive)
Russell in Bay of Islands (very attractive, very empty, beautiful views)
Doubtless Bay (undoubtedly one of the prettiest bays you could find, good fish and chips, zero nightlife)
Pokeno (celebrated my birthday played tennis in a vineyard and drinking unreal cloudy bay - perfect)
Coromandel Peninsula (mucho walking on beautiful beaches - wanted to stay forever)
Tauranga (good internet facilities plus sushi and a starbucks!!)
Rotarua (smelly sulphur, freaky steam rising out of the ground, lovely museum, maori buildings & art )
Lake Taupo (nice lake, very damp).
Napier (currently here on internet, art deco buildings, lunch beckons)

Then tonight we'll stay at Martinborough then head for Wellington and the South Island tomorrow... we are hoping to plan our time better in the South Island but we only have 10 days there too - help!!

Enjoy Wimbledon (it's on between midnight and 7.30am here - gutting) - come on Federer.

Lots of love from this fabulous place far away.

Louise and Nige

xx

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Comments

[Clive]

Greetings
Just a few words - because I hate writing when I'm not being paid - to say how much I'm enjoying the blog and the pix. It's rivetting stuff. Only slight criticism is that there's too much mention of tennis and nothing on golf. What are the courses like in Chile? How do the fairways of Argentina compare with those in New Zealand? And what about green fees? Despite the fact that you're obviously a bit new to this game, I'm enormously impressed and would urge you to consider a career in travel writing. I traditionally mow the lawn on Wimbledon finals' weekend so had better go now as it takes two or three hours to get the mowing going. Just to give you some idea of how prices have soared since you left, I shall probably get through about £25 worth of petrol trimming our lawn which, in your language, is the size of two tennis courts or, more precisely, the 12th green on the Old Course at St Andrews. Keep having fun and those blogs coming. Love, Crocky

[Poulu]

Golf averse
Greetings from Sydney, Uncle Crocky...Your mowing must have cost you a fortune if the men's final is anything to go by - at the risk of repeating myself and futher incurring the wrath of your 8 iron - what a match!! Surely you had to tear yourself away from the buttercups and daisies? We stayed up ALL night to watch it but, very disappointingly, fell asleep during the second rain break and so missed the final set - much cursing! You are right - golf has not even been mentioned in the blogs so far...disgraceful. But, to be honest, our time away hasn't been totally golf free. Last tuesday we borrowed (and watched!) the Caddyshack DVD from our motel owner though sadly our stamina couldn't take Caddyshack 2 (whose could?). We also spotted a very fine looking indoor 18 hole mini golf centre in Queenstown but sadly didn't play as the cable car and it's views of a non-plastic lake was more tempting. To be honest, they are not exactly golf mad in South America - though there is a rumour that the Peruvians have just discovered an ancient inca links course on a scale to rival Macchu Piccu - watch this space!! Thanks for reading the blogs, we appreciate it. Will update very soon from Oz. Hope you are well otherwise and see you when we get back. xx