Christchurch, New Zealand - 23/6/10

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Hi!

Well, with less than 6 hours until Enlgand's crunch game against Slovenia we find ourselves in our first new country in a while! New Zealand is really quite nice so far, although we haven't done much as we're acclimatising ourselves to the much MUCH colder weather here.

We picked up the Jucy camper yesterday and it's fantastic - we were worried that it wouldn't be very comfortable but we slept in until midday today so it can't be too bad! It even has a DVD player so we sat inside and watched a film last night.

To catch you up on our antics over the last few days we went up to Port Douglas and caught up with some Aussie Farmer types who we'd been working with in Melbourne and generally kicked back and relaxed, England v. USA notwithstanding. Then, with time running out we decided to sell the car in Brisbane instead of Cairns, mainly because no-one seemed to be able to get rid of them up there (it seemed like everyone drove up there at the end and then tried to sell their old backpacker rust-bucket). We did have a nice scuba tour of some of the Great Barrier Reef just off Cairns and had a great (tee hee) day, although we were both a little 'under the weather' on the boat trip out. We had an underwater camera we took with us so hopefully we'll have some good pictures at some point.

We then headed straight back down the coast, stopping at Proserpine and then Bundaberg (where they make the rum) on the way. Neither of those were particularlty exciting but when we got to Brisbane we were lucky enough to meet up with Craig and Alison, mates from back in Stalybridge, who had just returned to their hometown after 2 years in sunny England. They showed us around the place and even took us to an Aussie Rule Football game at the famous (mostly for cricket) Gabba sportsground, so I am now a life-long Brisbane Lions fan. They even took us to the airport - heroes! The car didn't do so well - we eneded up only getting $100 for it - but at least we didn't have to just leave it on a side street.

Now we're around Christchurch tonight (A-Team at the cinema maybe - then the England game), then heading to Akaroa tomorrow before going down the east coast of the south island (apologies for any grammar/capitalisation problems - my brain hasn't been in use for about 8 months now and is a little off it's best).

Anyway, hopefully people aren't too bored with all my babbling yet, and I hope anyone reading is well an enjoying a good northern hemisphere summer!

Tim

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