Come on England!

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Hi everyone

We are now back in Hamilton for the first test match which starts tomorrow. Very excited. All look out for the St Georges flag with "The Leaf" written on it which is Chris's cricket team. Yes, they lost the one day international series, so lets hope for better luck the next few days. It was however a great game at Christchurch & we had a lovely day. Apart from loads of fights kept breaking out as we sat in the cheap seats with all the Uni students. The police seemed to be making an arrest every 10 minutes. The sun shone all day until about 8.30pm when rain stopped play. A brilliant day.

We went to a place called Kaikoura at the end of our time on the South Island & went out in a boat looking for whales. We unfortunately only got to see one, but wow, amazing. They called him 'Saddleback'. He is a regular visitor each year during migration as food is a plenty in the continental shelf there. They have seen him for the past 21 years. It was an incredible moment. So huge but so gentle & graceful. Watching him dive for food was wonderful, as his enormous tail fin stuck in the air. I was very upset when we were told that commercial whale hunting still goes on because of a loop hole in the law. Out of the 1000 or so whales slaughtered last year, 60% were pregnant. Absolutely disgusting. We also got to see a fur seal colony on the coast at low tide. Beautiful. The rock pools reminded me of Brighton beach.

Back on North Island we went to a place called Waitomo. We went black water rafting in some underground caves & had to jump over a couple of waterfalls into rubber tubes. A bit scary, but great fun. When we turned our head lights out, the ceiling was lit up by glow worms which looked like the stars at night. It was a 3 hour trip & we were rather wet & cold by the end of it. Great fun though. Back to the centre afterwards for soup & toasted bagels.

Our last few days in the motor home we spent on a beach resort called Orewa, but unfortunately it was cloudy all the time. It meant though that we enjoyed a wonderful sunday roast. Our first in 5 months.

Yesterday we dropped the motor home back in Auckland & got the train this morning to Hamilton. We are staying in a really nice motel for 6 nights, it beats sleeping on top of the drivers cab in what Miles called the coffin. I will leave its size to your imagination!!

Thats all from us for now. Come on England!!

Loads of love

M&M xxx

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Photos

Waitomo
Ready to go

Comments

[Perry]

Wow!
wow sounds like you are having the most fantastic time! thank u for taking the time to put all this together. it makes such great reading and the pictures are brilliant! sorry i havent sent an email yet but I will do so soon! can not wait for the next installment! lol xx