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- Hello Everyone
Happy New Year and thanks once again for all your messages and also via fast-mail, have a short time slot on this internet - so we will be replying very soon!
Well we have made it! New Zealand is just the most breathtakingly beautiful place, the people are very friendly and it is amazingly easy to get around.
We have hired a new car and bought our new home - in a bag- a tent, yes we've done 4 nights under canvas.Only another 182 to go.... No ordinary tent you understand - it has a dining room, verandah and ensuite (hahaha) Luckily the facilties at campsites here are 21st century! There is a hairdryer in the loo! It took us 2.5 hours to put it up the first time, the lady in the shop said 20 minutes, but the instructions are in Chinese and this is beyond Gary's lingual capabilities ... but some of the language he was using in the process, I hadn't heard before...But we have improved, as it was raining last night and took 28 minutes!
The first four days were bright blue sunshine, but today again we have pouring rain, it is bucketing it down! But the tent has held up! We have bought out most of the camping accessory shops to ensure Gary has enough to carry - but we have treated him to a little trolley to assist him in this.
We stayed 2 days in Auckland in north island to start in a really lovely Backpackers Lodge in Mount Eden, really cute place near an extinct volcano.We climbed this and got spectacular views over Auckland. We then did the city sights, the Sky Tower was amazing! More unbelievable views. Fancied a bugee jump....(the highest in the world) , but when we actually saw them jumping off, thought better of it... maybe 20 years ago....
We then moved up north of Auckland to Whangeri which is really lovely, all little bays, palm trees (as it is subtropical here) and secluded beaches. Fields of cows and sheep everywhere with the greenest grass you've ever seen. We were up at Cape Reinga at the very northern tip of North Island yesterday, as soon as we got up there it blew a gale and started raining, but it didn't matter, it was fantastic. It smells lovely here too, there's something in the air which is a cross between baby powder and jasmine, they ought to bottle it! Gary hopes to do a dive in the next couple of days at Poor Knights Island - one of the top ten diving sites in the world - diving on a sunken battelship.
So where are the photos you ask, (we know you need to see evidence if we have really got Dee in a tent) but as usual we cannot load then, but we will find somewhere soon, so keep watching. We will be moving south of the North Island at the end of the week, going to the Coramandel Penisular, art deco Napier and beyond. We have met a lovely family who have invited us to stay on their dairy farm in Napier/Hastings (to pitch our tent in their field) but that's how friendly they are here, so we may take up their offer (after all we really got to like cows in California at Larry and Dawn's!).
Anyway, goodbye for now take care everybody, keep watching. We miss you all.
Lots of love, Dee and Gary XXXXX
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