auckland

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Hello All,

I am of the opinion that this blog cannot continue until the elephant in the room is addressed. England are out, the world cup is over and more distressingly we are quite plausibly looking at wales in the final of a world cup.

This raises several issues,

1) living in New Zealand has overnight become neigh on unbearable, (with the small exception of Argentina scaring them into playing very English rugby last night). It would appear that nearly every Kiwi now has a very real great great grandfather's second cousin's step sister that once saw the Eiffel tower or mined in wales and so are subsequently at least half French or Welsh depending on which angle the seek to exploit our misery.

2) It is now painfully clear that neither Myself or Andy could bear the shame of returning to England, particularly the southwest should Wales succeed. We have decided that only a six nations grand slam would be acceptable, and we are prepared to wait here for however many years it should take.

3) finally and perhaps most importantly who has killed Johnny Wilkinson and replaced him with some mug who cant even pass the ball 4 yards for an easy score in the corner, and in addition who the hell taught Ben Youngs when faced with an 8 on 3 overlap to slow it down and go blind!?!?!?!

RANT OVER

we left you last time with a slightly odd blog from Nelson, its my opinion that Andy had been preempting England's victory over Scotland and had been self administering an early round of victory sips.

The Australia game was great, again it was a great surprise to us to learn of how many of the early Kiwi settlers were of Russian decent but despite the large soviet fan base Australia were fantastic. Our seats turned out to be a uncovered stand on a grass verge, and the heavens opened! We stood there for an hour and a half in the pouring rain, in England shirts singing swing low at random intervals it felt very in keeping with our previous blog.

We moved on the next day into north island, across a very pleasant ferry trip with no panic that we were going to miss our crossing whatsoever! North Island is quite different! for one they have rain and motorways something we'd quite forgotten existed.

Wellington is much more a city than we've experienced so far, we had a damp few days exploring, walking to view points etc and then we moved on. I feel I've given a very poor account of Wellington, but it was difficult for us to park and we were itching to get to Lake Taupo so we moved on.

On the way to lake Taupo there was a mountain walk we wanted to conquer a 20k walk with a few climbs but nothing higher than we'd managed at Mt Fox the week before, the guide book suggested 7-8 hours at a max. 3 hours into the walk we came across a cross junction of different tracks. The sign said we had done half the walk and so were well ahead of schedule, knowing this we opted to add a 3 hour detour to the walk and do the summit climb as well, climbing to 2200m of mt Ngauruhoe half again of Ben Nevis, and used as Mt doom in the lord of the rings films. The climb was fantastic it was proper mountaineering hand over hand rock climbing not walking, the decent was petrifying but successful and we have some pictures and memories to last for ever......

however....the story continues. Back on the main track we trudged along aware we needed quite a decent pace to catch up where we should have been by that point, only half the group having tackled the summit. Which is perhaps why we payed slightly less attention to the map than we should have done. It became apparent at about 7 in the evening that we should have been nearing the car park and also we began to ask why there were no footprints ahead of us in the snow. we checked the map, wed been walking the wrong direction south instead of north for roughly 4 hours and it was starting to get dark with 4 hours more to the nearest road. we had no option but to plough on in the pitch black through the forest. we made it to the road at about 10pm very fed up very wet and very shattered, to find we were about 30 miles from the car park. We hitched lifts and we made it back by midnight - and subsequently the group has decided that Andy is no longer allowed to choose group activities or be in charge of the map.

We drove on to lake Taupo as the next day we had skydiving. This was incredible one of the hardest and best things ive ever done. 12000ft with views of both coasts as you jump a 45 second free fall and a 5 minute jump overall. The information given before, that the parachute deploys at a height below what we walked up the day before, didn't help our nerves! It was simply incredible there's nothing else i can say about it!

The next day we traveled onto Eden park and Auckland and french controlled misery. The game as I'm sure your all aware was another display of English naivety, the stadium was awesome the seats were great and the Reunion with a long lost uncle was great. Really looking forward to seeing the rest of the family.

We are leaving auckland today to do more exploring of north island, hopefully slow down the cash flow and get some surf in. For those concerned the knee is starting to feel a bit stronger now despite the 12 hour trek!

I believe thats all for now! But i'l just get the oxford lad to proof read, cant be aving no grammaa mistakes from the glaaster lad eh!

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Comments

[Matthew Sprague]

Andy and Maps
Andy hasnt been allowed to be in charge of maps for a long time. I really dont know what you were thinking Jeppy. Pretty school boy if you ask me. Hope youre having a good time.