On the Road

---

A whole new continent!

We arrived in New Zealand on 6th December and stayed two glorious nights in Auckland, being spoiled and looked after to within an inch of our lives by Jim, Aidan's school friend and his wonderful wife, Rahma. Auckland is a spotless, walkable city and, though notably more expensive than South America, we wish we had more time there. Highlights of our days included a boat trip to one of the Islands, where you can really appreciate the 'City of Sails', fantastic sushi and an unnesseccary though hilarious trip to karaoke where Jim and Aidan temporarily reformed their college band.

We were then on the road and have not stopped driving since. We picked up our spaceship, 'Voyager' (no kidding - the name is on the of the van!) which is a bright orange people carrier which has a full bed in the back, and headed off to Lake Taupo. The Tongariro river, which feeds in to the lake has the best trout fishing in the world so we donned our waders once again and headed off with optimism high. 5 hours and 2 fish (for Aidan) later, we dragged our weary souls back to our lodge. After another brief morning with rod in hand for Aidan, we jumped in the van and headed south. We have not stopped driving since! We reached Te Anau yesterday and have had our first day off today. The rush is because we head off on the Milford Track tomorrow, a wonderful walk through Fiordland which is tightly controlled by the Department of Conservation, so we had to reserve our spots back in July! We are looking forward to it, despite the fact it is scheduled to rain heavily and the sandflys will be out to get us!

New Zealand is very beautiful and reminds us both of the UK, especially Scotland, should the skies always be blue. We have met so many Brits, Scots particualrly, who came over in the 60s. They have Coronation Street on the telly and the accent sounds much more British than Austalian!

We are looking forward to having more time to relax and enjoy the country once our trek is finished. WE will be revisiting all the lovely places we cantered through at pace in our spaceship including Kaikouri, where we hope to spot some whales, Christchurch and the Lakes District.

Before NZ, we had a fantastic experience in Easter Island. We were lucky to have picked up and read 'Kon Tiki', not a disease but a book by the explorer Thor Heyerdal who journeyed by reed raft from Peru to Polynesia to prove it could have been done by the Pre-Incas. This gave us an idea of the magnitude of the Pacific and helped us realise what a tiny spec Easter Island is. The 5-hour flight also helped, as did the 5-hour flight onto Tahiti where we spent a night dozing at the airport as all the hotels on the island were too expensive for us to stay at! Anyway, Easter Island is a very special place and the stone heads, which were ancestral effigies, are awesome; particularly in the quarry were about 100 lie unfinished. We were pleased we did the tour of the whole island before we were off on the next leg of the journey.

Hope you are all enjoying the Christmas party season. Seeing large Santas melting in the heat is a weird sight for us! More soon from the other side of the world....

---