La Sagesse St. David

... days yet! Day 2 ended with heavy downpours all night but a much warmer room!!<br> Day 3, still raining! We had planned to visit Willowbank wildlife park on our way out of Christchurch but as its mostly outside we might have to rethink! Today is the day we pick up our wheels! And dead on 10am we were picked up from the hostel and taken to the depot, after singing the paperwork and handing over wads of cash we were on our way. Thankfully Em picked up map reading pretty quickly and we got ...

... fields we should be able to get our pasture into a pretty good state by next year for a horse or two! Merv was born and bred around here, his Grandparents worked with the miners up in Puponga years ago and so he is pretty clued up about land around here - we got onto the subject of swine flu ( like you do) and I asked him if he thought he'd have a problem with swine flu as he employs around 80 men...." Only on Mondays" he said !

... Native, and also 100% Maori. Bob is from London, and has been living here for many years with his wife and two children. These two brought us all over the city, introducting us to Kiwi life. We explored the city, and learned that the phrase "taking the **** at you" is both common and friendly. Our second day here we went to the Te Papa Museum where I learned more about Kiwi history, and saw ...

... year 12's ( I think) and included several adults and the rest very nicely mannered teenagers, some who had ridden alot and some who were first timers! This ride is not one for the faint hearted, it can be ridden quite fast and involves alot of up and down steep terrain. Gail said therewas evidence of wild pigs in the area so we held our breath, hoping we wouldnt come across any as Pigs and horses dont mix, they are ...

... drink and popcorn for $6.50, which is like 3 pounds! The seats at the cinema were huge and comfy and the legroom was immense. The movie was alright too, better than the Da Vinci code for sure. I wandered past the parliament building but there isn't much else to do in Wellington. A lot of people from my bus caught up with me in Wellington so we went out in the night and then left NZ's capital, bound for Taupo.

Met up with the other stragglers from the bus....looked like they had been on it for days! Thank god we flew - executive way to travel!! OH MY GOD we are SICK of snoring travellers - they should be banned from stopping in hostels! We had another few in the room so had to escape - at 2am we had to wake up, shine torches, screaming and shouting for them to pipe down but nothing was noticed! Kat decided to trot down to reception on pj ...

After pleasant ferry journey from Picton the nightmare of finding a hotel room started in Wellington not helped by the fact that New Zealand were playing India in the one day international - Ben is in the dog house after travelling 40 km's north finally find a lovely B&amp;B.

it all started with me waking up once every hour from 1130p until 330a when my alarm went off. 6a flights aren't fun. at the airport, the qantas check-in woman did not know where jakarta was! she said "you going to sydney" to which i said "no, jakarta" her: "where?" me: "jakarta" her: "frankfurt then where?" my concern...should she really be checking people in for international flights ...

... time at sea - it received a very mixed reception. He also asked who in the audience had spent the most days at sea, not necessarily on Princess cruise line, and by a process of eliminating hands it became apparent that there were three possible winners, two with over 400 days on ships but one became the outright winner when he said that at the end of this cruise he would have completed 741 days at sea. Frankie, the assistant cruise director then started asking more ...

... in wellington so is very informative, he has a large garden so stuart decided to help out with a bit of weeding &amp; ted suggested we stayed &amp; carried on, perhaps we could emigrate &amp; start up a business, it could help stus hands as they have been better. we were up with the lark on the 27th as we wanted to see some of wellington before we sailed across to the south island at lunch time ted cooked us an awesome breakfast, we ...