The Glasshouse North Island

... cars to try and get out of the city so we decided to wander down to see the giant Santa on Queen's Street. Thank goodness that was over.................

Monday morning saw the children going to school for the first time. They were so excited and were up very early, so eager to get there. They loved the fact that they didn't have to wear a uniform and the fact that they didn't have to leave for school until ten to nine! On arrival we ...

... by Misty, within inches of her leg and continued. Testing each stair and then stepping up. We were floored.

Later we ran into a birder friend we deamed "The Boston Racer" he is a lister and always seemed to be racing around, and we told him of the experience. He said we were lucky and wanted to follow us. We got to see another kiwi not long after, what a treat. It wasn't too late, and we wanted to see penguins so Misty and I ...

... bizzare situation, an auction in the front of an estate agent's office with the door open on to the street! It was all done properly with an auctioneer and as we had forced the auction our bid was the starting bid. You often see on cartoons, character's hearts popping out of their chests - that is exactly what I thought was happening to mine! I think both Jeff and I were ready to wet ourselves!!

No one else put a bid down ...

... bearings and promise them we would come back less jet lagged at the end of our time here. We hitched to a small town in the westish called Hamilton, where we again couchsurfed, in a Santa Cruz style college house rivaled only by Hebard Street in our heyday. They were Great! They took us all over - to both coasts, to their home town for some BBQ, let us borrow their car to go some places ourselves, and were generally just awesome. They even ...

... really. From here I went up Tucker Beach Road to admire the view to Cornonet Peak as it was streaming sun.
After that I went & found a storage facility in the Frankton Industrial area just so I know where It is if I needed to leave the car down south for any extended period. Then from there really it was just getting my stuff sorted, drove back into town again then back to the airport where I went in, checked in and went straight through to the gate. Nice trip back to Auckland ...

... especially missing Guido who is hilarious and a fantastic chef!

It is so weird to be settled and I can't stop buying home comforts and I went to lush and bought loads of beauty products and I suddenly have like 10 pairs of boots/shoes which is scary! I have been good on the clothes front thought and mainly bought things that will work for work and casual..so trying to be careful! (Girls you'd be proud!)

I can't wait to travel round and do things as at the moment I am ...

... but could not check into a new room until 2pm. We hung around the hostel most of day and eventually shelled out the extra money for our own private room that night. Next morning we said our goodbyes to New Zealand and made our way to the airport. The last 6 weeks have been rather exciting with a lot of firsts for both of us like bungy jumping, skydiving, white water rafting and that was just the adventure stuff! Australia will have a lot of work to do to live up to New Zealand.

... That night was a quiet one as we were up at six the following morning to do the Tongariro (sp?) Crossing. The Tongariro crossing is a day hike across an active volcanoe. I donīt remember itīs native name, but you will all know it as MT. Doom in Lord of the Rings. It was a very cold and misty morning when we set off on the 19.4km hike. But after half and hour of walking we rose above the cloud line and up to the foot of the mountain. Looking back, we stared at a ...

Day two in Auckland was great, I relaxed in the morning and had a great breakfast of Muesli (basically very good gronola, served everywhere), yogurt and fresh cut fruit... and of course a latte... I've been meaning to describe how amazing the coffee is in New Zealand, but you can't describe. Just take your favorite little coffee shop, or Starbucks, and imagine it tasting 10x better. That's basically how ...

... X was driving "Black Beauty". The main feature race started at 3pm, but we were entertained by the opening ceremony including: driver parades, the Haka Challenge, skydivers, areoplane acrobatics. The main feature race was over 50 laps - Switzerland finished 1st, Ireland 2nd and Portugal 3rd. GB and NZ finished way down the line! Just one final thing to say about Taupo - it's got super ...