The Courtyard Waiheke Island

... Batter, the old World War 2 defence installment but the $8 entry swayed my compadres to push on.

We managed to return to the port just before sundown as the temperature dropped. Patience not being one of our strong points we skimmed stones rather than joining the ferry queue & typically when we eventually did, we were refused entry as it was deemed full. Only an hour wait, kudos Fullers!

... a photo of that. We then had an amazing lunch of Fish and Chips at apparently the best fish and chips in New Zealand.

We then headed past Auckland to see some of the famous Kauri trees - about an hour North of Auckland - which were really huge, particularly the famous McKinney Kauri which is 800 years old. We stayed the night in a really nice town by the sea called Sandspit and had a long walk on the beach ...

... you have to practically kill someone to get your turn Time to catch the boat, catch you all out at sea!! Late Entry: After settling in we got our margarita in time for the farewell party as we set sail! Toured the ship to get our berings and even found a little time for Sara's favorite game in the casino (Lobstermania). Mom was the big winner (450 - and no not ...

... ich Johannes heiße. Darauf sagten Sie " Wow, dann musst du ja eine Prinzessin sein." Kathi hat natürlich erst nicht verstanden, aber später stellte sich raus, dass die Zwei statt Johannes = Your Highness (Eure Hoheit) verstanden haben J Steve, der Vater und Kathis Chef in den letzten Wochen leiht uns großzügigerweise für unseren Urlaub ein Auto - Black Biest genannt. Wir treffen Rafael am Busbahnhof in Hamilton uns machen uns auf in Richtung Süden, denn wir ...

What a fantastic place, this has everything. Went for a lovely walk, had some wine from a local vine yard, bumped into 2 great All Blacks stars (Trish had to point them out to me), great food and topped off with a lovely stay on the beach. Bumped into two America's in, Justines favourate, a great bar on the island, lovely people who sailed over from Mexico in a 32 ft yaht - loonatics.

Arrived safely about 1245 hrs on Saturday 31st (13hrs ahead of UK now remember). Flights were good but arrived tired due to lack of sleep. Picked up hire car and managed to follow family to get safely to Beachlands, a suburb of Auckland. After a quick bite to eat, we went for a walk to two of the local beaches and then returned in time for a BBQ with friends of Karen & Chris (Janice's sister ...

... forking out another $50 for the dvd and photos! Bit of a ripoff. Needed a drink after that so we found a few pubs then went Mexican for dinner. We had the smallest jug we have ever seen of Margarita - only 500 mls for $22. Another Auckland ripoff. 06 January Had the worst $83 haircut ever from a salon in the Downtown Westfield mall. Quite annoyed at how bad it looked when I got back to the hotel, and even more so when I washed it ...

... the BYO thing. This means you can bring your own wine to a restaurant and only get charged a small corkadge fee to drink it there. Now wine is really cheap over here so it saves you loads. We also did a bit of a vinyard tour on the saturday afternoon and got to sample some of the great wine at Mudbrick and Cabel Bay. On sunday we went up to Nick's for a delicious sunday roast ...

... for a few drinks. Although the drinking age is 18 in New Zealand, Connie and I were thrilled when we got carded anyway (hooray!). We were even pleasantly surprised by the live band, which was pretty good. They even did an emo version of Outkast's "Hey Ya" that was, amazingly, pretty good. After shakin', shakin' like a polaroid picture, we headed back to rest up for the next day's activity: wine tasting on Waiheke Island. For you ...

... A large (probably staggeringly expensive) dish on a (probably staggeringly expensive) stand by the French windows was used for people to pay $10 a head for their attendance, with nobody really paying attention to who had and hadn't paid. Our somewhat sceptical attitude led us to hold fire, figuring we'd maybe chip in later if it seemed to be worth paying for. Mike had left us all to go and collect a fourth Couch Surfer, a Czech girl by the name of Gabriela, from the ferry terminal ...