Next Update (North Island Part 1)

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Auckland:
The opening game caused few upsets as expected. However, two particular highlights were finding my first pint and the referee disallowing New Zealand a perfectly legitimate try.
As well as rugby, the sights of a wine tour and several parks on Waiheke island come highly recommended. Other highlights included picking up the campervan and blasting the horn for about 30 seconds until the novelty wore off.

Overall reflections: Kiwi’s moan a lot more than the English, especially when it comes to rugby.

Tauranga:
A day’s surf on the north east coast was abandoned, due to hangovers and terrible weather! (English are only fair weather surfers I’m afraid). Fortunately, we settled on a quiet night and watched England play in the evening in a quiet bar… The night ended with us drinking with the Samoan rugby team, and getting my picture with a few of the players. It’s always the quiet ones which are the dangerous ones!

Rotorua:
The SMELL! Again another overhyped kiwi and Australian tradition (although most anti-podians have only been to London so don’t realise “it’s grim up north too”); the smell is actually only bad near some of the hot geysers due to sulphur and you get used to it after a few seconds. Here, we went for hot spas so I was looking my best for the mid-week match in Rotorua stadium. I also visited a traditional mauri village in the morning of the game where I was made chief of the tribe, before leading the Haka! (there are photos so you can judge for yourself how good I am)
Post-match we were set up with a traditional mauri “hangy” (where they cook food in the ground) and further entertainment and dancing was performed. My skills from earlier were re-called and I was set to perform another Haka. On reflection, the once was enough for me!
Other events included getting Terry (a New Zealand dad where we were staying) blind drunk (much to the pleasure of his wife), white water rafting, downhill biking and go-karting. Don’t tell matt but unfortunately he is not very good at this and was left in my wake on several occasions.

Overall Reflections: Kiwis are very nice people, but they still definitely moan a lot more than the English, and are even more pessimistic about their rugby team than us!

Lake Taupo:
A brief stop in the Lizard (the bar) and a spot of golf with the Welsh National Side. More celebrity spots for Callum on tour! This was a really brief stop (although more drinks than normal were consumed that evening, it must be that world cup fever) and the next day we headed down to Wellington.

Wellington:
What I didn’t tell you was back in Rotorua, a gentleman took us off the beaten track to visit the blue and green lakes. Now, don’t get me wrong, pleasant scenery is lovely, but there is nothing worse than changing a slow puncture in the pissing rain half way up a mountain in gale force winds, with a jack a spanner that had survived both world wars (not to mention the replacement bald tyre). Needless to say, we saw Callum’s first strop on tour.

Anyway, after that moan, back to Wellington. We met another family here and had being doing our very best to stay out of the campervan and in people’s houses. (Smart move by all accounts) Paul and Cathi (Mike Brown’s friends) were excellent hosts, although Paul and his son (Tam) adopted a tag team approach to drinking. Paul would set an early pace, and later leave with his replacement son taking over fresh in the late evening. It was not until the next morning I could work out where it had all gone wrong and by that time I was in no state to drive. Fortunately it was match day, so roll on South Africa vs Fiji, and rather like the night before a similar format evolved. I was lucky enough to see Paul and Tam’s local rugby club and all off Wellington city centre during my stay.

The Ferry trip to the South Island is the next stage of the trip. Oh, by the way, did I mention Ireland beat Australia yesterday!!! No-one likes to see a big tournament upset like that.

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