south island in COLD! not quite the -12C that we had been told, but pretty chilly nonetheless. having learnt our lesson after the north island debacle, we had hired a car in advance, the aptly named el cheapo. el cheapo was a pretty rickety white 4 door mazda, automatic transmission which was pretty gay, but otherwise suited our needs perfectly and we basically arrived at the airport and hit the road immediately, we had like 5 days to see the whole island, which ...

in melbourne now, so this is now almost 2 weeks behind, catching up tho! turned up in auckland bout midday after a pretty gay flight, mainly cos the only film on was firehouse dog, not ideal. once again we had failed to organise anything beforehand, although this time it didn't really pay off like usual. basically because we had to be in auckland in 3 days time to meet up with williams again the plan was to hire a car down to rotorua, spend a night there, go back...