Made it, clots and all

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Hi folks
Sorry its been a whilebut you may have heard that we've had a drama or two. Anyway, we made it to NZ and its great but before that, I've got a bit of catching up to do.

When I signed off last time, we'd arrived in Mooloolaba. Well we went out on the Saturday night with Jen & Rich and had a nice Thai meal and a couple of drinks at the Surf club, (its great try it if you're there). Don't know what went wrong but the next day when we were suppose to be going out with Richards family and some friends of theirs on a Pontoon boat on the Maroochy river, Janet came over sickly and couldn't come. I went though and it was great. The boat had a toilet, barbecue, CD player and we took booze and food and had a whale of a time. Got back & Janet was a little better but had been sick most of the night before. We think it could have been something to do with some Anti Biotics she'd been taking for some swellings which had appeared in her legs recently. This was the start of quite a nerve racking couple of weeks really, when we thought we'd have to stay in Oz and miss New Zealand altogether. Janet went to the docs, who told her that the swellings were blood clots and sent her for blood tests, CT scan and chest Xrays. Janet had these and we prepared ourselves for staying over, which would have involved extending our visas at a cost of $200 each, no problem there though as long as Janet wasn't at risk. The next days & weeks went by in a bit of a blur. We did things but our heart really wasn't in it. We drove down into New South Wales with Vikky & Roger though and called in at Byron Bay for lunch. That evening, we went into Brisbane and had a superb steak at the Norman Hotel there. We went back up to Mooloolaba to see Jen, Rich and the kids again and got caught up in an horrendous traffic jam on the Bruce highway, caused by two trucks colliding in shocking weather conditions. (It threw it down for the best part of a week, tail end of a cyclone up north apparently). The journey which should take about two hours, ended up taking seven. We were incredibly relieved when we went back to the doctors with Janets scan and Xrays, to find that the clots were in superficial veins and not dangerous when travelling so we could move on after all. (The main relief was obviously that Janet was ok). This was the Thursday before we were due to leave and we'd convinced ourselves that we weren't going antwhere, so we had a lot of rushing about to do before we finally got off on Monday. Vikky & Rog were great and Roger offered to sell our car for us, which he's doing. They ran us up to Brisbane airport first thing in the morning in Rog's Roller which was great and we arrived in Auckland to be picked up by Heather and old friend from the UK, who emigrated to New Zealand along with Mark and their three kids about four years ago. We had a nice meal with them and Mark helped me to rent a car, to set off around NZ on the Wednesday. Mark ran me down to pick the car up and there was a bit of argy bargy about the tyres which we didn't like the look of but they changed them in the end and we set off at about lunchtime. (We'd gone to Kawakawa beach, Maraetai beach and a lovely waterfall called Hanui I think and had a really good day). We drove South through Hamilton, Otorohanga Pio Pio Arorangi and many more nice places and some stunning countryside to a region called Taranaki, which has a spectacular mountain at it's centre, funnily enough called Mount Taranaki. We pressed on and got a B&B in New Plymouth on the coast, a nice town with a lovely park, (Pukekura Park I think). Next day we drove around the semi circular shaped bump on NZ north islands's west coast. Quite a nice drive but if I'm honest, I'd probably take a road nearer to the mountain if I was doing it again, so that we could call in at a few more interesting places. One place we stopped briefly at though was Middleton Bay which was lovely. We tried to get onto one of the lookouts there but there was a guy playing his guitar and yodelling all alone, so we left him to it. (This just about sums up a lot of small towns in Oz and NZ and if you're going, don't forget your banjo). (Remember deliverence starring Burt Reynolds & John Voight). Only joking, everyone's really friendly and the towns are quite picturesque as is most if not all New Zealand.

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