Hey folks!! Well. I spent the last week in Auckland with Tom, Eddie (yay!!) and Eddies friend and roomie Cy. Me and Tom were pretty broke when we got there so just moseyed about for the first few days, got taken out on the town over the weekend, went to my first ever strip club! Very classy place called Showgirls, which was interesting to say the least. I just enjoyed happy hour!

In those days Ed and Cy were working so me and Tom did some jobhunting, pretty useless without a visa which we couldn't afford until monday so did some cheap sightseeing. Went walking around the city, round Viaduct Harbour etc, checked out the Minus 5 bar (through a window in the next bar) its a bar made out of ice, you pay $30 to get in, get a coat and a complimentary drink and u can only stay in there for 30 minutes!! We also went up the Skytower, its 328m high and the tallest building in the southern hemisphere! And the lift that takes you up has a glass floor, argh!!

On one day Tom, Ed and I got the ferry over to Rangitoto island, its the most recent volcano in the Auckland area and you can walk up it! We did the summit walk, which took us right to the top, and it was one of the best views I've ever seen in my life!! We also looked into the crater, and had a look into some lava caves, which the boys went right into! I waited outside, all i could hear was very faint whimpering!!

Because of the visa situation, being that a normal work permit takes up to 6 weeks to process, me and Tom started looking at seasonal work, as a seasonal work permit is processed on the spot. We soon found some, working in a vineyard in Blenheim, which is right at the top of the south island. We both wanted to get out of Auckland anyway, after living in Sydney for 6 weeks we were pretty sick of city life!

And so here I am, sitting in Lemon Tree Backpackers in sunny Blenheim. The flight this morning was on a plane called a Beechcraft, which seats all of 16 people, but there was only about 12 of us. Mum, you would have hated it, rickety old thing!! Good thing was, everyone got aa window seat, which was really appreciatd on this flight. We flew over the Malborough Sounds, mountains and beautiful turquoise sea, my face was glued to the window for the whole flight!

The backpackers is pretty nice, its two houses next door to each other, so its well kitted out and very homely :-) anyway, I'm going to attempt some kind of lunch fashioned mainly from carrots and soy milk. Tally Ho!!