The End of OZ and Part 1 of Auckland with the Wood tours

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Hi guys,

Well the news since the last blog is that after leaving Airlie beach I arrived in Cairns where i was due to board a diving boat for 3 days and 2 nights. However due to our dive master missing the boat we all missed it, so I spent the rest of the day at the lagoon with Ash & Toni before we met up with the other lads. That evening turned out to be my last with 3 of the guys as they weren't coming diving but heading down to Melbourne. So it was a night out with a power hour where you drink as much as you can for $10 in an hour, before an early wake up call to this time actually get make it onto the dive boat.

With a 2 hour journey out to the main sleeping & diving boat there was plenty of opportunity for people to be sick and yes many took full advantage of this opportunity! Once on the big boat it was a quick tour and finding your room then lunch and then a dive briefing before jumping in the water. As you can see from the pictures we saw Reef Sharks, a few turtles, lots of barracuda, hundreds of beautiful coloured fish including Nemo and his mates. (I had lots more pictures of fish and coral but didn't want to bore you all with it!) The time on the boat can best be described as: Dive brief, dive, food, dive brief, dive, food, and so on with a few hours sleep between our night dive and our 6am dive! It was a fantastic experience and good times.

I then left Ash and Toni on the boat to head back to Cairns where I met 2 friends from Rainbow beach and went to Cape Tribulation. This is where the Rain forest meets the ocean and Great Barrier Reef. We had a great tour guide that really made the trip worth while.
That evening I returned to Cairns met up with Ash and Toni again as they were back from the boat and it was my last night in Australia because in the very early hours of the morning I was catching a flight to Auckland to meet Alex, Woody and Issy!!

After a long days travelling I got to Auckland to be greeted by the happy family on a lovely summers day, so Alex and Woody took me down to St Helier beach and we had fish and chips in the sun over looking some of Auckland. So there I was sitting enjoying the food and the view when Woody decides to let me know what he has planned for me during the week, Yes he had planned for me to work for him at Line 7 and Canterbury all week!!!! cheers mate! But in fairness it was a good laugh (despite the many hours of overtime) the guys there were good fun and I managed to spend my weeks wages in one lunch time at the Canterbury and line 7 warehouse and that’s with the discount! On the Friday I managed to get out of work though and head down to school with Alex and meet her class of 5 year olds. I was there all day helping them with their Christmas arts and crafts and then got to be the DJ for musical statues!!! :-)

We spent this weekend doing some of the sites around Auckland inc North Head and Cornwall park as tomorrow morning I head up north to the Bay of Islands and travel around for a week before coming back to spend Christmas with the Wood's.

I'm not feeling particularly Christmassy at the moment but I’m sure as the day gets closer i'll come round to the festive theme.

Well I hope your all well and I wish you a very merry Christmas and happy new year wherever you may be, enjoy and i'll let you know how i'm getting on over the Christmas holidays.

Lots of Love Tom xx

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