City Towers Auckland

... lamb, we chatted about old times in their beautiful wooden house until it was time to catch our bus back to the city. Sadly,I fogot to bring the camera, so I'm unable to post any pics of her, her four children or the amzing fruit crumble she made for dessert. Next time.

So now we find ourselves on the famous Tranzscenic Overlander - a 12-hour train journey that will take us through the north island, from Auckland to ...

היי לכולם
הגענו לניו זילנד לאחר שטייל 04;ו קצת בהונג קונג וראינ 93; תצפית על כל העיר ...

Landed at Auckland airport at 07:00 after a good but tiring flight with Cathay Pacific. After making my way through customs and bio-security (sniffer dogs actually walk down the carrousel jumping over the bags to detect non-permitted substances ranging from diary products to drugs) I got the shuttle bus into the city which took about an hour in Auckland's rush hour and dropped me off at ...

... passive aggressive, laughing off any argument with Beth with a sneaky little chuckle. His real laugh, which he uses often, is much larger than he is, and comes from deep within his belly. It has two tones, the standard, and then every so often it slips up into a falsetto laugh, which is a real treat.

 It appears his wife passed away a couple of years back, but was ill for a while before that. I don't know what it was she was ...

... and having some yummy food in pretty Mission Bay.

The next day we had to depart and headed straight for Rotorua on the Eastern Sulphur highway, named due to all the routes along this highway being of sulphurous origin of some kind. Rotorua itself is a fairly small, necessity driven Americanised town. Scattered among many motels and small hotels are firstly lots of activities. One can do many an unusual thing to pass the time here. We decided to zorb and ...

... easy to walk on the ice once you get used to it. It was a brilliant experience although a little scary how deep some on the crevaces were! We had a look at Franz Josef Glacier from a distance, equally as impressive if not more, and then continued up the coast to see the Pancake Rocks in Punakaki, which are more exciting than they sound! After a whole day of driving we arrived at Abel Tasman National Park. We stayed the first night at ...

... around the 39oC mark and we all lie back and someone produces a bottle of wine. We watch the sun go down, occasionally going out into the sea to cool off when the water temperature gets too much. Soon after this, with a clear sky, the Milky Way is clearly visible and we chat until late and the tide begins to creep into the lower pools and head back for freezing cold showers. We have booked a kayaking tour the following morning (again) and head round to Hahei beach to spend the night. 21st ...

Very odd start to the trip searching around the free places for the Auckland Art Festival i happened to wonder into a gallery which it now has transpired that it was in actual fact part of a university. It also so happened that i happened to wonder in as a panel driven debate was about to start. This whole situation was made stranger by ...

... After that we were allowed into the meeting house a house full of traditional carvings depicting the leaders of all the significant maori clans or tribes A show/stroy was then put on for us depicting ancient maori life and how the arrival of the europeans chaged things and how the treaty of waitangi came to be signed. THere were displays of Maori traditional songs, amd dances, Haka ...

... most horendous places anywhere in the world used to be the town directly opposite where we were standing.

It was full of sailors who had spent the last months stuck on a boat circumnavigating the entire world, and just went absolutely mental when they at last found themselves back on dry land.

I could only think about that chaotic bar in Pirates of the ...