Swam with a dolphin!!!

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hello everyone, we are at Jane's now (James' cousin) in Ngaio, a small area just outside central Wellington. James' uncle Allan is also staying with us at Jane's house whilst we are here which is nice.

So on wednesday we drove to Napier and went to Marineland where we swam with a 37 year old dolphin called kelly! Common dolphins normally only live till 20 so she was the equivelent of a 150 year old! We weren't able to touch her as she was too quick for us but she was beautiful and interesting to watch, and still playful. james threw a ball to her a few times and she nudged it with her nose which was really cute. i brought a disposable underwater camera and took a few pics of Kelly but won't get them developed for a while as didn't use the whole film, am going to save it for Fiji where we hope to do some snorkelling/scuba diving. we were able to swim with her for half an hour, the water was so cold tho, even through a wetsuit (and flippers and a snorkel!) I found it really hard to regulate my breathing through the snorkel at first, its very surreal to be able to breathe underwater. James was shivering for about half an hour afterwards, i thought he might have hypothermia but luckily he finally warmed up a bit! It is so cold here at the moment as an antartic wind has come over, there is snow in the region although we haven't seen any yet.

Yesterday we drove from Napier to Jane's house which took about 5 hours, including stops and time to get lost! There are two Awarua Streets (the street where Jane lives) in the Greater Wellington Area and we got the wrong one! Once we arrived we met Jane and Allan and stayed in for the evening and Jane made a lovely homemade lasagne for us and we watched some really cheesy NZ TV! They have a terribly cheesy soap opera/drama here called Shortland Street which is loosely set in a hospital although most of the drama occurs in the bedrooms!

Today Allan drove us around the local area and showed us their old family home and the places they used to work. We also went to the local shopping centre which was completely packed as its school holidays for two weeks. I brought Tony Parson's book 'man and boy' as i've never read it and have finished all the books i've brought with me! I've read 5 novels in a month!
This evening we are meeting james' other cousin David, and Jane's new boyfriend Craig, we are going into central wellington for dinner which should be nice.
We booked our ferry across to the south island today for 8.25am on monday, even with the web saver discount and the top 10 holiday park club member discount it was still $249!
Jane has broadband so we can go online quite a bit which is good, will try and time coming on with a good time in england so hopefully we can chat to a few of you via messenger!
That's all for now, love h&j xx

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