North Island

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Update:

Hello

Thank you for all the birthday wishes! It was lovely to receive them. I had a good day. It was lovely and sunny so we did a walk round Auckland, and then went for dinner in the rotating restaurant in Sky Tower. Then threw ourselves off it the next day as Bernards pressie to me - what a sweetie! It was fun though, even if i did scream lots!

Can't remember where we were when i last wrote, but Kyoto was really good. Lots of cultural stuff. We managed to see Geisha performing the tea ceremony and their Spring Dances - both highly surreal, as was the 'Traditional Buddist Theatre' with not a word spoken - just dance, and we still didn't understand any of it! We finished Japan off with a few days skiing in the mountains. Excellent last bit of snow and almost noone else there to share it with, the best hostel so far, and even managed to fit in a visit to an onsen - scarily naked!

Hong Kong was good too. Lots of shopping to be done, quite a bit of island hopping around the sights. Tai Chi lesson on the water front, sailing round the harbour on a Chinese Junk. All good. Very cloudy - any sights above 50m were mostly obscured!

We are both really enjoying New Zealand. Definately a problem of too much to do! We picked up our van just over a week ago, and it is sooo fab! Have been up to the north of the north island and done the usual, saw lots of VERY old Kauri trees - may sounds dull to some but some of these are 2000 years old and we loved it. On to 90 mile beach and Cape regina, and then to the bay of Islands with lots of sailing and kayaking. We popped over to Waitomo Caves for a 100m abseil and some caving to get out, and via a quick 'Zorb' for Bernard we are now at Lake Taupo and going to do the Tongariro Track tomorrow. Apparently we are lucky we don't need crampons for the path!!

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