New Zealand

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Ok, here comes the first half of our blog from New Zealand, focus on the North Island. To be honest we have taken so many photos it´s going to be really hard to pick the best, but I´m sure we´ll struggle on through.

We arrived in Auckland on the 17th February, pretty smooth but sleepless flight (too many good films to watch), we were met by Andrew and his friend Dave and whisked off to Helensville for our first night (not before answering questions concerning which drugs we had taken in Thailand by a random immigration officer at the exit, which included him asking if we´d ever taken Heroin! Hard to describe my reaction, something between absolute horror and stunned hysteria, I managed to hold my tongue until we got in the car..

We spent the next 6 days with Pamela and Andrew (all the way from Scotland!) who had timed their holiday to coincide with our arrival in NZ. Headed first to Auckland and a trip up the Skytower which will always be particularly memorable for Pamela (she has bad vertigo), luckily we all made it down alive and to a nice lunch which made up for it.

Our second stop was to the Bay of Islands, which took our breath away it was so beautiful. Sadly we ended up being part of the 5% of people that don´t see a single dolphin whilst cruising around, but we were sure there would be other opportunities so weren´t too worried. We also got in some serious kayaking before heading back (John and I showed off the impressive skills we had picked up in Thailand, see pictures) so it was all good.

On the way back we visited the Kauri Museum which took us through the extensive history of logging, honestly, it is more interesting than it sounds, it also had an amazing exhibition covering life back in the day and photographs of many of the men and families who were working in the forests. Also a collection of bugs trapped in Kauri Sap, I forget the technical term...

We were lucky enough to be invited onto a boat one evening in Auckland Harbour to wave off the QE2 on her last visit before being turned into a pleasure palace somewhere off the coast of Dubai. Amazing views of the ship and of Auckland at night and John´s French accent was most definitely a hit with the ladies (I wasn´t sure they were going to let him leave!).

Our last stop with Pamela and Andrew was the rain-sodden Rotorua which put us off getting into any outdoor thermal springs, but a trip to the thermal village there, plus some luge racing in the hills as the sun came out made for a great stop. The trip to the village gave us more of an insight into how the Maori People have lived in harmony with the land for so long and how it still continues to work for them. That evening we headed off for an intimate Maori supper along with another 150 odd tourists!! The food was cooked in a 'Hangi' which is a traditional Maori oven that uses the steam from the thermal springs to cook all of the food. Absolutely delicious. A smaller group of us were then taken to visit a kiwi enclosure next door to get our first (and only it turned out) look at the shy birds, who lay the biggest eggs in comparison to their size it makes your eyes water.

We said our goodbyes to Pamela and Andrew and headed to Wanganui further south on the west side of the North Island for some river action. Our canoeing experience on the Wanganui river was amazing, gladly noone was filming as the shreeking and screaming going on every time we came down a rapid was not overly becoming. Luckily a more experienced couple, Ian (from Middle Wallop-small world) and his fiancee Linda kept an eye on us from a safe distance and the muffns and tea/coffee we had had at the amazing Flying Fox (great place to stay if you are in the neighbourhood and as long as you don´t get vertigo) kept us going long enough to make it to the shore (16kms down the river). Wanganui was a great stopover as we also finally managed to get ourselves to a golf course which reminded us quite how rusty we were and required extensive beers later to recover.

From Wanganui we headed to Wellington and the ferry that would take us over to Picton on the South Island and on to Blenheim in Marlborough for some wine tasting.

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Photos

Bay of Islands
Pamela showing us how it´s done

Auckland by night
Saying farewell to the QE2