Aniwaniwa Cottage Homestay Auckland

Another long flight and we have arrived in Auckland and amazingly all seem to have recovered from Jet lag and airline food.

Les and Ken are excellent hosts and making us very welcome and comfortable. Florence has got a little confused with the relationships between us and is now calling Ken ' Grandad' which he is rather tickled about.


We spent yesterday afternoon playing on the beach and have ...

Hi everyone at home,

We are relaxing in the B&B and sipping some NZ Sauvignon Blanc and getting our strength up to walk to the pub for dinner.

We both had a very long sleep last night and then enjoyed a very good breakfast at the B&B with some other guests from Canada, Holland and Belgium. We were the oldest, not your typical B&B.

Today was our day to explore Auckland ...

... boat to go past making the tension build even more. As soon as every1 counted down I was flying off that ledge was pretty awesome, ended up with my arms in the water which was a bit of a suprise but all good fun! Backwards was scary hanging backwards over the edge to my surprise there was no countdown he just asked me what i had for breakfast i said nothing and he let go. On the video you can herar him say as i'm falling "you should always have somethign for ...

... birthday before cracking open one of the bottles of Moet.

Maureen had kindly made lasagne for dinner so that was VERY welcome after all the restaurant eating we have done over the last 6 weeks - I never ever thought I would say that!!

The kids played and played before collapsing in a heap. A very big day ahead in the morning.

We were all exhausted but Jeff and I laid in bed unable to sleep as we were listing all of the things we needed to do!

jetzt ist schluss mit nett sein. genau so wie mit gross- und kleinschreibung.
dieses ... neuseeland. ich bin froh, wenn ich hier weg kann und ich werde so schnell nicht wiederkommen. von anfang an gab es negative schwingungen zwischen uns. mein auto verreckt bereits am dritten tag auf einem huegel und spinnt auch danach staendig rum. im ganzen land ist es winter und ueberall kalt und nass. nirgendwo kann man schwimmen gehen. es gibt einen haufen ...

... Marmite and Branston Pickle. We've driven around a few of the areas that I stayed the last time I was here in 2000, which was good to see how they had changed. I imagine Angels and Demons has been out in the UK for a while, but we went to see it last week and really enjoyed it. I'd always said that NZ was one of the most beautiful countries in the world (especially the South Island!) and my view hasn't changed ...

... which was pretty interesting. It gave information like the airspeed, altitude, time to destination, time at destination, etc. And, I watched a movie or two and then we were there. I had 6 hours to wait in Auckland, so I walked around and found free showers! I didn't have a towel with me, but it didn't matter because the shower felt so good. Finally I was on my way to Sydney.

... this time as I'm diving under, feeling the pain of the almost ice-cold water against my still flabby body, i immediately thought of all the people that lost their lives on the Titanic that fateful night. What a way to go, freezing to death in ice water. It certainly woke me up for the day but i had to jump back under the covers to warm myself up a bit. After we ate sandwiches for breakfast, and Tanja had made a hot tea each, we drove around the coastline towards Picton, and ...

... when her small rucksack tested positive for explosives! She was questioned and it didn't bode well when she mentioned her 5 month trip to South America. The sniffer dog was called for - he sniffed, but wasn't interested, so Judith was allowed to go! Judith later recollected that her bag had come into contact with explosives in Bolivia, i.e. a stick of dynamite, which we bought for the miners ...