Marina Motor Lodge Wellington

... And our portions are way huge. This is why we figure America is the home of the fattie.<br><br>On another subject, we competed in a pool competition in our hostel last night. LIttle did we know, Liz was quite the pool shark and awed us all with her "behind the back" shooting abilities. She was definitely a fan favorite. We were proud of her for making it to the top 6! <br><br>We are further happy to announce we surprisingly have 16 hours of work set up after a ...

... the all blacks and the wallabies in the tri nations.<br>We met up with Denisse and Mokey in their apartment (they are living here now for a while) and went for a few drinks with them and a few others before the game in the apartment. It was great to meet them(last time was about 3 months ago in Argentina) and to catch up.<br>From here we went top game-it was a great experience to see a tri nations game and to see the all blacks playing and in particular ...

... stopping first at Kawakawa to look at the public toilets. Weird - no not me, them. They were designed by Friedrich Hundertwasser, an Austrian artist who had live in this part of NZ for the last 20 or so years of his life, and as I had I had seen much of his quirky work before in Vienna I was keen to see what he had done here. And spookily, the lady running the nearby gift shop was originally from Coatbridge - now that's weird. The coastal towns in the Bay of Islands ...

... were really pumping, we took a taxi back to he hotel although it would have only been a 10 minute walk (it winter OK).<br>The next day we had breakfast at Latitude 45 on the waterfront, then spent the whole day at Te Papa Museum, if you go don't miss the Giant Squid.<br>We found it hard to find somewhere to eat (decent meal) in central Wellington without going to a hotel, be ...

... since I had to be at Torea Bay at 4pm for my water taxi. The track info said 9 hours but they drastically over estimate walking times. Still I booked it all day. I have to admit the 2nd day was hard work and not fun. It was a lot of hills and down is just as hard as up sometimes. I'm kind of glad I was walking solo the second day because I wasn't in the mood for talking, I had to summon all of my energy for making it through. I made it to Torea Bay at 2:30, 5.5 ...

... tourists on their first stop from the north island. We headed for dinner at Seamus's Irish pub for a taste of home for Paula. A guiness hotpot and a few pints of quality guiness (very unlike the dishwater served up in Auckland) went down an absolute treat to end the day! Having woken up slightly later than usual with a fuzzy head from the 'few' pints, we walked to the town for a look around and stopped for a hearty lunch. This was ...

... they owned a cat, who was harmless enough but shed hair quite profusely.. I only rested my bag on the floor for a couple of seconds and it looked like an animal skin! Plus they had a small parrot called Edmund who insisted on squawking every few minutes, night and day. My room being the furthest away, made it quite bearable, but I had visions of waking up plastered in cat fur and coughing up my own fur ball... Went to town to fortify ourselves with a hearty meal in the Deniston ...

... getting a bit too old for this kind of thing. Or at least part of her thinks that, the other part had a great time, especially going down the giant slide. The guy who runs Dylan's football league was also there and had a couple of goals set up, so he got to have a bit of a kick around. I do hold the guy responsible for getting Dylan into Man United though, something I hope to beat out of him over time.

... main attraction, a large hole filled with water that hissed and bubbled whilst spewing a huge cloud of steam into the air. The base of this hole really did look like the imagined surface of the moon, but I'm not sure that the pictures really do it justice. The smell of the area wasn't so nice, but the walk turned out to be really great fun, a definite must. Next was the very well known Waitomo Cave, home to a huge number of glow worms. There ...

... had the game on and I was just in time in to see the last two quarters, although the signal was terrible. Most AFL Grand Finals of recent years have not been nail biters by any means, but this year&#8217;s was easily the most exciting since 1989 with the Brisbane Lions just getting up over the Magpies in a thriller to win back-to-back premierships. I think I can pretty safely speak for the majority of footy fans when I say that the only thing better ...