New Zealand/Sydney Diary 2010: Part 3

The last, but hopefully not the least, of my unexpurged, unedited e-mails from my NZ/Sydney trip back in 2010 for your gratification (PS: my engagement party has now happened, as indeed has my wedding, so if you go to Butler's Wharf in six days time I will almost certainly not be there!):

"Ok, I am actually back in the UK now and recovering from the after effects of an epic 33 hour journey around the world, but nevertheless I promised a final instalment so a final instalment there shall be (and this is it).

My last e-mail left off in Dunedin, which is known as “Edinburgh of the South”, and my guidebook indicated that the residents actually still have a distinctive Scottish burr. Disappointingly, this proved to be a tissue of lies, much like some of the other nuggets of information which I spotted in the Rough Guide, for example the suggestion that New Zealand measures beer in “flagons”, “riggers” and even “elegantly fluted twelves”. Presumably in the fantasy world in which one can order such measures in a pub without being greeted with gales of mocking laughter, if one was not quite up for an elegantly fluted twelve one could settle for a “quaintly piccoloed four and a half”, or something of the kind. Almost as far fetched as the suggestion by a man who inflicted his company on me in the bus from Rotorua to Wellington, who suggested that if I put butter on my fingers in Arthur’s Pass I would have Kea birds flocking to lick it off without taking my fingers with it. The fact that both of his hands still featured the usual five digits suggested that he had not tried this experiment himself, and because I never take suggestions from strange men on buses these days, neither did I (in fact we did not end up even visiting Arthur’s Pass, let alone take any dairy products with us to use for such inappropriate purposes!)

Nevertheless, the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet Guide did prove invaluable to us on a number of occasions, and did at least provide us with a glossary of useful Kiwi phrases such as “daggy”, defined as “uncool; from the dags that hang off sheep’s bottoms” and “westie” defined as “from West Auckland; rough edged fellow, probably wearing a black tee-shirt, drinking beer and listening to AC/DC; see also bogan, munter” (in fact both “bogan” and “munter” refer back to “westie”)!

Anyway, I would venture to suggest that Dunedin lacks some of the charm of the Edinburgh of the northern hemisphere as well as the Scottish accents, although the swimming pool, the Cadbury’s World and the Speight’s Brewery are all fun. But it was nevertheless nice to get back to Queenstown, a town with real charm and a huge number of things to do, except of course that we did not end up getting a chance to do most of them because practically the only time it stopped raining during our three day sojourn there was when it started snowing. We did, however, get to do some snow shoeing, which due to the icy weather was particularly dramatic and brought back alarming recollections of the fate of Captain Scott from our recent visit to the Antarctic Centre. Although if Captain Scott had had to put up with such a politically incorrect travelling companion as our guide (his “hilarious” Chinaman impression would have made Bernard Manning wince with embarrassment), he would probably have ended up eating him and thereby ensuring his own survival (which would have made for a considerably less heroic story, perhaps!)

We did go up the gondola in Queenstown as well, which had a fabulous view (if you happen to find thick fog visually appealing), and we were not short of things to do in the evenings thanks to a fantastic wine tasting shop which had 84 wines to taste (we did not quite get through all of them but we had a pretty good try), but during the other two days (before and after the snowshoeing day) we had to settle for swimming and going to see “Despicable Me” at the cinema (was it me, or did they model the central character on Dara O’Briain?)

Thus moving over to Australia and the warm, temperate Sydney climate was a bit of a welcome relief for both of us. You will recall that Australia have now got their first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, whose reign began inauspiciously when she was photographed with her new banner “Flying Start”, with one word below the other, and most of the photographs cut off the first letter of each word so that it suggested something else entirely! Despite this hiccup, she managed to just about retain power at the last election due to the fact that her opponent, Tony Abbott, appeared to spend most of the election campaign wandering around Australia’s various beaches in a pair of excessively tight speedos, waving his ponderous beergut in the faces of the horrified electorate, which was probably enough to put anyone off!

We had to fly from Queenstown to Christchurch, and from there we took a flight to Sydney. The flight out of Queenstown was itself pretty dramatic (and I still have Julie’s fingernail marks in my arm to prove it) which for me partially made up for our not getting to do an official “scenic flight” over Milford Sound, which I did back in 2003.

On the Christchurch-Sydney flight I found myself sat next to an elderly woman, who initially seemed friendly, chatty and above all, harmless. This first impression swiftly disappeared over the course of the flight, when in three hours she managed to miraculously transform herself, through the medium of alcohol, from Miss Marple into Oliver Reed at his wildest, taking every drink that was available from the air stewardesses and then surreptitiously pilfering a couple more from behind their backs whilst they were not watching. It was when she started doing an impression of me that my hackles started to rise (needless to say, the soused old bat did not even get close to doing me justice). In spite of her mockery, she then asked me to hold her hat as she staggered off to make one of her several drunken attempts to upgrade herself to business class. She was very fortunate that she was sitting next to one of the last gentlemen in the English speaking world, as a less restrained fellow traveller than myself would have probably have retaliated by punching a hole in her hat and then stamping on it. She had disappeared by the time we landed in Sydney, so I can only assume that she was ejected somewhere over the Tasman Sea.

We had a wonderful time in Sydney from start to finish. The YHA room was probably better than any of the rooms we had had in NZ (with the exception of the “Raja Room” in Blenheim) and unexpectedly en suite, which brought a jetlagged smile to our faces. It also had a swimming pool on the 9th floor which offered spectacular views of the city even if it was only slightly larger than our bath.

On the first morning we did a tour of the Sydney Opera House (probably narrowly beating out the Colosseum in Rome for the title of “my favourite building in the world” on the basis that opera singers tend to receive slightly better treatment than the gladiators in Ancient Rome did), thinking that we would be lucky to get standing room seats at any actual operas that they happened to be showing for the price that we were willing to pay. However it turned out that we were in fact able to get tickets for “the Marriage of Figaro” on our last night there for less than half the price we would have paid for the Lord of the Rings tour we had turned down in Queenstown (in all honesty there is only so much I am prepared to fork out for the opportunity to touch Gimli’s helmet!) I am not much of an opera buff but I was nevertheless excited at the opportunity to get to see an opera that wasn’t Don Giovanni!

In the afternoon following the Opera House tour we had a look around the wonderful Botanical Gardens nearby, then after lunch we walked around Sydney Harbour, looking at the Literary Walk of Fame, which has plaques for such legendary Australian authors as…er, Umberto Eco (who apparently merited inclusion because he “visited Australia in 1982”). We then went back and forth over the Harbour Bridge before retiring to the hostel, then out again for tapas and sangria at a Spanish restaurant (Sydney being a relatively international city, and I did try kangaroo as well on another occasion so no one can say I did not have my fair share of Australian cuisine. FYI it tastes like a particularly bland steak).

On the second day we took a ferry out to Manly beach. We almost ended up missing the boat due to my being a glutton for punishment and not running away fast enough when one of the street “entertainers” at the harbour “volunteered” me as one of his stooges to help him ascend a twelve foot tall unicycle. He then proceeded to waste twenty minutes of my time with “hilarious” banter interspersed with moments of virulent anti-New Zealand hatred (which was quite surprising bearing in mind that he was actually American) following which he finally climbed up the damn thing, and I got my revenge by scuttling away to catch the ferry before he could ask for my help getting down again. From the fact that the area was not cordoned off when we came back, and there were no suspicious bloodstains on the pavement, I can only assume that he roped in some other unfortunate victim to help him down. We had a nice walk along Manly beach, although it was not quite warm enough for me to feel any envy for the rugged Antipodean lunatics who were surfing nearby, and then got dinner at a restaurant that was recently voted as having the best pizzas in Australia.

The final day was spent going at Tauranga Zoo, followed by the opera in the evening (with dinner beforehand at the Opera Bar, which is not in fact in the Opera House at all, as the person on duty informed us with some smugness, but nearby overlooking the harbour). And that is all I have to say about the trip for now, and if you have any desire for further information you can pester me with questions at our engagement party, which, just to give you all a further reminder, is next Saturday (i.e. six days time) in All Bar One in Butler’s Wharf)!

See you all soon.

Al"

New Zealand Diary 2010: Part 2B

More NZ shenanigans from 2010 below:

"Apologies for another message so soon, but apparently my original e-mail was too long for the facebook fascists, so I had to split it into 2 (editing it to remove the surplus rubbish would have taken too long I'm afraid and if I had done so I would probably have got another message saying it was too short!)

Continuing directly from my previous e-mail, the Antarctic Centre was expensive, as I said, but the exhibits were quite interesting, including a room where they took the temperature down to simulate a genuine Antarctic storm. In all honesty it felt like a slightly less damp version of an average winter in London, so I suspect they were pulling their punches a bit, probably out of some absurdly paternalistic desire to avoid killing too many tourists. But it was worth the entrance price just to see the tiny blue penguins being fed. Naturally most of them were given cutsie names like "Pedro" and "Bagpipes" although there was also an "Alex" who had broken both his beak and one of his limbs, so was obviously as clumsy as his ginger namesake. They also had a "Pingu" who turned out to be much more of a queue barger and womaniser than his fictional counterpart. Most of the time I have not had too much trouble with the New Zealand accent, but on this occasion I must have misheard something as the penguin feeder mentioned during the session that the reason the oldest penguin, "Toto", had lived so long was because he did not have to worry about any creditors. Mind you, they have occasionally had problems understanding me as well (the horse riding people I mentioned in my previous e-mail, who got all excited about the horse on my Lloyds TSB card, had written my name down as Mr Crockflab after I called them, which was almost as bad as the "Mr Cockhard" my father once got at a Chinese restaurant).

After Christchurch we went on to Mount Cook, which really is in the middle of nowhere, and it was at this point that the landscape really started to get more spectacular and also much more empty and devoid of people, the South Island having a much smaller population than the North Island. It was also a lot more rural, as was evidenced by the house which was using a microwave for a post box (presumably the Kiwi equivalent of a hotmail account). Mount Cook was spectacular, even though the tour of the glacial lake we had booked had to be cancelled because if we had gone on it they said we would probably have been flattened by a passing iceberg.

We then travelled to Dunedin (following a brief stop off in Queenstown, one of my favourite towns in New Zealand and one we returned to for a lengthier stay later on). Dunedin is home to the steepest street in the world. This is a few kilometres out of town, but I am convinced that our hostel must have been on top of the second steepest. However, we had to choose the hostel based on its name alone, which was Hogwartz, spelled with a "z" to avoid confusion with the place I went to school. Unfortunately I think they must assume that all guests have their own broomstick or hippogriff, and as we were equipped with neither we got very fit climbing the hill dozens of times during our two day stay, even though once again a lot of this was undone when we took part in a tour of Cadbury's World conducted by a tubby Willy Wonka in dungarees.

We managed to get through the tour without falling victim to the evil machinations of the Oompa Loompas, and we did get a fair bit of chocolate, but unfortunately to maximise one's chocolate intake during the tour one had to answer the tough questions set by the guide, and an elderly gentleman on our tour had obviously been on it before (in fact he probably went on it every day) and was firing off answer after answer, pocketing chocolate bar after chocolate bar whilst quietly cackling to himself. Eventually Julie managed to get an answer in, but I suspect that if I hadn't been fixing him with my steely glare at the time, this chocolate snatching, geriatric Augustus Gloop would probably have clamped his hand around her mouth and shaken her to the point of insensibility to prevent her from getting the answer in before he did.

We followed this tour with a scenic train journey, taking in such exotic sights as the Taieri Gorge and the quaintly named "Arthur's Knob", and then a tour of Speight's Brewery in the evening, which was particularly wonderful as they finished the tour by leaving us alone in a room with 6 beer taps (only for 15 minutes, alas). Having exhausted the delights of Dunedin, we went back to Queenstown the following day, and I will relate the highlights of this last part of our NZ tour, and indeed our subsequent trip to Sydney, in a fourth and (mercifully) final e-mail in a week or so.

Bye for now

Al"

New Zealand Diary 2010: Part 2A

Part 2A of my series of e-mails from 2010 detailing my journeys through New Zealand (and a bit of Sydney at the end). The fact that it is split into Parts 2A and 2B also demonstrates my struggles at the time with the frustrations of modern technology. As mentioned previously, this is an entirely unedited set of e-mails sent to a selected group of friends, which I foolishly thought could be circulated via facebook. Should have stuck to being a luddite....

"Greetings once again from New Zealand. The more assiduous readers among you will recall that last time I wrote I ended by describing my experiences in Wellington just before I crossed over to the South Island, and that I visited Te Papa museum, which contained, amongst other things, an exhibition all about earthquakes. Having spotted that NZ is right smack bang (if you excuse the expression) in the middle of a huge faultline, the thought occurred to me that it was strange that the country suffered from so few earthquakes. I clearly must have been thinking too loudly, as Ruaumoko the earthquake god obviously heard me and decided to throw a massive wobbler that very night. Or possibly it's Julie's fault. She does have an uncanny habit of being on the scene for all sorts of disasters (as evidenced by the fact that our first date was on the Cutty Sark just before it caught fire) and I have often speculated that if she had been born a century earlier she probably would have found herself sailing across the Atlantic in the Titanic and then come back on the Lusitania.

But technically, as far as the earthquake goes, neither of us were "on the scene", being on the wrong island and several hundred miles away at the time, so one could say that this time we had the perfect alibi. However, the fact that a state of emergency was subsequently declared in Christchurch (which also happened to be crawling with scientologists, but that was probably a coincidence), did not stop us, gluttons for punishment that we are, from visiting the city a few days later (twice!)

First, however, we crossed over on the Interislander ferry and took the bus to Nelson, a useful "gateway" to the Abel Tasman National Park. There we were greeted at our hostel by a rather sleepy looking individual with a thatch of blond hair who reminded me a bit of a narcoleptic polar bear. This led me at once to the mistaken assumption that this hostel would have rather a laissez faire attitude to its guests, but instead the owners proceeded to treat us rather like unwelcome house guests, closing the various facilities at arbitrary cut off points. For example, the kitchen was open from 6 am, but the lights and power did not go on until 6:30, so in effect the owners were indicating that it was perfectly acceptable for us to fumble around in the dark during that period (it was particularly dark in the area surrounding the "sharpened implements" drawer) as long as we didn't get it into our foolish little heads to do anything outlandish like actually trying to cook anything. Normally neither of us would dream of getting up that early during our holidays anyway, so it would not have been a problem, but this was the "active" part of our trip, as we had planned kayaking and hiking trips in the Abel Tasman. And unfortunately getting transport out there meant getting up very early indeed.

Our tiny windows of sleep were further diminished by the garrulous German girls who were on skype outside our room until ungodly hours every night (isn't modern technology wonderful? Once upon a time it would have taken months to travel from Germany to New Zealand, but now German girls can giggle at each other from opposite ends of the globe at the touch of a button). By contrast, the rugby team that were also staying at the hostel did little more than throw a few pebbles off the roof at around 10 pm one evening. Aren't rugby players supposed to be hell raisers? It was actually faintly pathetic, a bit like the Rolling Stones in their heyday going off to feed the ducks instead of getting completely trashed.

Our kayaking session was very enjoyable, although it did involve a bit of clambering around on a cliff that had not been mentioned in the brochure, which I suspect that the guide would not have suggested had he known a bit more about myself (extremely clumsy) and Julie (almost as clumsy and also terrified of heights), but fortunately my fiancee rose to the challenge bravely and we survived the terrifying ordeal. After such healthy outdoor activities in the Abel Tasman we proceeded to Blenheim to undo all the good work with a fantastic afternoon of wine tasting in the glorious sunshine. I say "good work" but in fact Julie had caught a cold and sore throat in Wellington which got worse in the Abel Tasman, which affected her voice to such an extent that if I had not been looking at her when she spoke on a couple of occasions I would have assumed that Frank Butcher must have come back from the dead.

In Blenheim we treated ourselves to a night in a hotel following the wine tour (as opposed to the usual grotty hostels), and were given a Moroccan style room (referred to as "the Raja Room") with more pillows and cushions than one could shake a stick at. I had in fact been to Blenheim before, back in 2003, and am very proud of the fact that, together with a Geordie called Dave, I managed to break the record for the number of wineries visited in a single day by the tour company in question. Sadly, this time we used a different company (the "Bubbly Grape Tours") and although they did a grand job and still managed to get us around six vineyards in four hours plus a distillery, a chocolaterie and what I suppose should be referred to as a "fudgerie", they had not heard of these legendary exploits, so unfortunately my name does not appear to have lived on in infamy.

By this time (tanked up on booze, no doubt) we felt more than ready to handle Christchurch. We arrived on the Wednesday evening (the earthquake had struck on the previous Saturday) and there was, as you would expect, a lot of damage to many of the buildings to be seen as soon as we got close to the city. There were a lot of soldiers around as well, and it was extremely difficult to find anywhere that was open for dinner that night. We eventually found a Japanese place that was open called "Mums" which was brilliant. Having experienced both Mums and "Sweet Mother's Kitchen" in Wellington, I would advise you that if you are ever hungry in New Zealand, try to find something with a maternal name and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

Our first stay in Christchurch was a very brief overnight stop on the way to Hanmer Springs, which had a lovely spa and excellent fish and chips, but was marred by the YHA being a bit like a prison camp (at least on the inside), only with rowdier and more reprehensible inmates. These consisted of a gang of noisy schoolchildren in their late teens, who I suspected would be a pain in the backside as soon as they walked through the door. The YHA staff did make a half hearted warning to them not to make too much noise outside, advice which, in fairness, they did take, as they proceeded to make too much noise inside instead. All night. I may be sounding like a prematurely grumpy old man, but is it really socially acceptable among today's youth to run around corridors at 4am screaming "Hamish" at the top of their voices? What is it supposed to achieve? I am not even sure that "Hamish" existed. Anyway, after that night of fun and games it was a relief for us to get back to Christchurch where there was nothing to plague us but earthquakes and scientologists. We did feel a few piddling little tremors both nights we stayed there, but nothing worse than a 4 on the Richter scale, peanuts compared to the original, which was a 7.1. 

We had a bit longer in Christchurch the second time round, and decided to go to the Antarctic Centre, which is a bit out of town but is served by a coach called the "Penguin Express" which runs every hour. The driver, presumably Mr Penguin, turned out to be a former policeman, and upon hearing that I was a lawyer, mentioned that, by an astonishing coincidence, he had a friend who was a lawyer who had referred a couple of clients with problems to him once upon a time. I am not quite sure why he spoke of this with such pride, as not only did Mr Penguin fail to solve these problems, but he also added another fairly large problem to their pile in both cases by arresting them! He then suggested that if we bought him a bottle of gin and sat him down by the river he would tell us all about it. Even though this would probably have proved cheaper than the Antarctic Centre turned out to be, we declined his generous offer. In terms of eccentricity he was second only to the taxi driver we recently came across in Ireland who, when asked what there was to do in Limerick, replied with two questions of his own, which were "Can you swim?" and "Can you throw a knife?" (TO BE CONTINUED)"

New Zealand Diary 2010: Part 1

Having spent a fabulous week in Andalucia I am officially in a happy holiday mood right now (a mood which will no doubt dissipate rather rapidly on Monday morning). I have been far too lazy to do a holiday blog this time round but recently found myself reminiscing about my last "big trip" back in 2010 when Julie and I spent a month or so travelling around New Zealand (with a few days in Sydney as "dessert" at the end) and thought I might as well dust off my holiday diaries from that trip and share them with t'internet folks (I have avoided the urge to edit or otherwise tinker with them). So here's my first entry:

A few of you may remember that many years ago (early 2003, to be exact) I spent 2 months travelling in New Zealand and recorded my thrilling adventures in a series of e-mails. After a seven and a half year hiatus I am finally back, this time with fiancee in tow, for the belated sequel, and whether or not anyone enjoyed reading the last set of e-mails, I enjoyed writing them so I am going to subject you all to a couple of further instalments.

Accessing facebook at all from the other side of the world has proved surprisingly difficult, as when I first signed in I was told I was in 'an unusual location' and so I had to prove my identity via a series of "tests" which included identifying seven of my friends from two of their facebook photos. I soon found out that this was a more challenging prospect than it sounded when the photos from one of my friends (whose identity is still unclear to me) consisted of one photo of themselves as an infant and one photo of a cartoon devil. Fortunately facebook makes allowances for the fact that everyone has a few friends who are instantly forgettable, so you are allowed to "pass" on two of the questions.

Anyway, digressions aside, my journey began with an excruciatingly uncomfortable 24 hour flight via Hong Kong. During the second leg of the flight I was unfortunate enough to have a doppelganger of Keith Miller from EastEnders (he looked very similar, and he also smelled roughly how I imagine Keith Miller to smell, as well as being possessed of a similar level of intelligence) sitting directly in front of me. "Keith" wasted no time in pushing his seat back as far as it would go and no amount of surreptitious sharp kicking from me could get the grotesque man to move it forward again. Julie managed to get a keyring with her name on it in Hong Kong though, so not a complete washout.

We landed in Auckland at about 7 am last Saturday, sweaty and sleep deprived (speaking only for myself, that is, Julie, being a lady, never sweats at all, and actually managed to snatch a few hours of sleep during the flight in between the seventeenth and eighteenth repeat of Family Guy). We soon perked ourselves up with a coffee by Auckland Harbour though, followed by a brief cruise around the harbour during which we were informed by our tour guide that New Zealand's biggest imports are Japanese cars, and their biggest exports are in fact onions. He didn't in fact say "sheep are soooo 2003" as he didn't happen to be a camp Californian, but I could tell he was thinking it. But more of sheep anon.

Speaking of California, Julie's conclusion was that Auckland was a bit like all the boring bits of San Francisco, so we decided not to linger, but departed for Rotorua the following morning. Our coach driver was in fact going further south, but made a big fuss of telling everyone that there would be a "driver only" change in Rotorua, in a tone that suggested that while his replacement was a "driver only", he himself was so much more than that. I half expected him to do a David Brent and follow this up with a statement that he was a friend first, a driver second, and probably an entertainer third, but mercifully he refrained from doing so. We made a brief stop off at a cafe and I was greeted by the sight of a massive cock in the garden (or at least Julie says it was a cock, I maintain that it was in fact a hen, but I thought it would be a shame to let the opportunity for a bit of childish innuendo slip out of my hands).

We arrived in Rotorua, indulged ourselves with a soak in the Polynesian Spa on the first morning, which contained a number of different hot pools each with different minerals in them, all of which were overlooking Lake Rotorua itself. It was extremely relaxing. We followed this up with a "Maori cultural evening", complete with Kiwi watching (the birds, not the New Zealanders in general, they have all gone abroad to avoid the tourists), glow worm sightings, and excellent food from a hangi. There was also a bit where one of us was chosen to be a "chief" whose job was to make a speech, following which we would all support him with a rousing rendition of a Maori chant. Eventually, after the usual awkward and embarrassing hesitation, a rather wizened old gentleman from New South Wales called John was "volunteered" as the chief. John proved to have rather a cavalier, reckless approach to leadership, in that he demanded that we performed the Maori chant without having practised it first. The result was as messy as might have been expected, and the chief Maori muttered something afterwards which I half expected to translate as "kill them all, and leave no survivors", but was in fact something surprisingly mild and sycophantic. All in all it was an excellent evening.

The next day we decided to hire ourselves a car, the roads around Rotorua being so wide and simple that Julie had concluded that even an idiot like me should be able to drive on them. It was actually my first experience driving an automatic, and once I had deduced, through a lengthy process of elimination, that "D" stood for "Drive", everything went relatively smoothly (although Julie's attempts to pronounce some of the Maori street names caused much hilarity. "Rangiuru Street" caused particular problems.) We went to see some redwood trees in the morning, then went horse riding in the afternoon. My horse was a malevolent character who went by the name of "Cossack", and not since Wendy at the Trinity Hall College Bar has anyone taken such an instant and visceral dislike to me. All I will say is that if all the cossacks had been as uncivilised as him, there would have been a lot more pogroms, and the Russian Revolution would have happened considerably earlier. But fortunately he was not given too many opportunities to kill me and it was actually an extremely pleasant ride, despite my getting occasional snorts out of him that probably translated as "just give me an opportunity to trample you underfoot and I'll crush you like the pathetic maggot you are", or something along those lines.

Our final day in Rotorua was quite a busy one. Rotorua is known by the New Zealanders, rather touchingly, as "Rotovegas". Although I haven't actually been to Las Vegas I suspect that it does not shut down quite as early on Sunday evenings as Rotorua does, but nevertheless it is true that there is quite a lot to do there, including "Hobbiton tours", which is an innovation since last I was there. We refrained from doing this one, as it happens, exciting though the opportunity to see a bunch of sheep chewing away at the mouldering remains of Mr Baggins' once proud home would have been. The tour would probably have been more accurately described as "A tour showing what would have happened if Mordor had won and all the hobbits had been exterminated".

Instead, we went to Wai-o-tapu, which has a weird and wonderful array of boiling mud pools, thermal lakes in all sorts of strange colours, and a geyser that is artificially induced to erupt at 10:15 every morning. Amazingly we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and made it with several minutes to spare. We even had enough time to look around the neighbouring gift shop first, which had various products on offer including something that was described as "Kiwi Willy Wash". I am telling the honest and unadulterated truth when I say that there was actually a sticker on it saying "Try Me". I had been told on the Maori tour that if Kiwis are touched by humans they sometimes refuse to eat for up to a week, so I can only assume that if someone tried to apply some of this unorthodox product it would probably trigger the extinction of the whole species.

That afternoon we went to my first ever sheep shearing, hosted by an extremely creepy man in a vest that was just a little bit too tight for comfort. I am pleased to say that I actually took part in these proceedings, not as a shearing "victim" but as a lamb feeder. The lamb I fed was very cute indeed, and I tried to eradicate from my mind the fact that I had probably eaten one of his close relatives that very lunchtime. We then went luging later in the afternoon and departed for Wellington the following morning after an extremely tasty waffle based breakfast. We encountered more poultry en route, as well as a very friendly fellow traveller who was half Maori, half Danish, and (obviously) went by the name of Dave!

We only had one full day in Wellington, which gave us enough time to see most of the floors of Te Papa, New Zealand's National Museum (which literally translates as "Your Daddy"), go up Wellington's cable car, get into a heated debate over whether it was technically a cable car at all or a funicular, and eat at a very good restaurant called Sweet Mother's Kitchen (twice), which is near the Embassy Theatre, which last time I was there was showing The Two Towers and had a huge statue of Gollum sticking up out of the roof. This time they were showing the the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but sadly there were no statues of depressed looking Swedish people on the roof, which I feel was a wasted opportunity.

We crossed over to the South Island this morning, and the details of what we do next will be related shortly (once we have done it!)

Oh, and we slept through the big earthquake (being on the wrong island at the time).