Why does it always rain on me :((

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When we arrived at Camp last night, we were delighted when the receptionist said that New Plymouth had been blessed with great weather over the last two months....well guess what, as per, we woke to grey skies, closely followed by the heavens opening and unleashing one heavy bout of wind and rain.

You know in Edinburgh, during the festival when you all feel sorry for the tourists that visit and have to sit through the tattoo with poncho's on - well thats us today.......big thank you to Frances and Family for our early Christmas pressie of pac a macs, much used, and much appreciated.

Our slight glowing tan, is fading back to scottish pastieness again, anyway enough of the moaning, New Zealand is beautiful, and the reason it is so luscious is because of all the rainfall it gets!

We have planned for this avo, a trip downriver in a Waka which is a traditional Mauri Canoe, followed by a quadbike trek through the rainforests of Mnt Taranaki..

Hopefully will have something exciting to report later....

So we sat in this wee room in camp surfing the internet in the hope that when we came out it would be blazing sunshine, but unfortunatley it was was pishing down even more!!!

We consoled ourselves with a lunch in a fancy restaurant looking out to sea. We were engrosed in reading our menu's when I felt something jump in my lap and looked down to see a wee dog like Paris hiltons ...((dont ask me to spell it!!)) This thing was just sat there like it was its rightful place and I could only but giggle at it sitting there!!! Meanwhile, my loud guffawing drew attention from the other diner's who looked at me in disgust for bringing a dog in with me! Graham had to explain it was not ours, and it was finally ejected by one of the Waiters.....

Once again we were suprised at the cheapness of the meal and did not realise until later, that once again we had been undercharged for our meal ....karma for the bad weather perhalps....

The weather was very obviosly not going to get any better so we decided to eat up some miles and drove to Waitomo for the night.....eating up many more miles, but even with the heavens raining down on us, the drive was simply stunning... this place must be really beautiful when the sun shines, it truly is "Middle Earth"

We arived at the camp and again greeted with the faitful, yeh its been threatening to rain all week, but we have been lucky here""

After a wee nap, we headed to the hot tub for a soak until we turned wrinkly...then to Curly's bar for a game of pool and a portion of bangers and mash that looked as if it would not be out of place in Desperate Dan's comic strip......the bangers were massive!! ( if only we had a camera, mum!! )

After 5 pints of Macs we found it partcicularly challenging to convert the bed, when we returned to the van.... a lesson learnt for future booze ups...

We must have only been asleep for about an hour when the heavens opened, a real nasty downpour accompanied with lightening...its sounded as if Graham had parked under a waterfall..

After a really restless night we woke to slight drizzle, but who would have guessed the rain was to be a blessing today!!

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