We arrived in Auckland in the early afternoon with no dramas, but the difficult part was to come, trying to find our way to James' house (James had very kindly agreed to let us stay,despite only meeting each other a couple of time about 15 yrs ago!!!) in suburbuan Auckland. Somehow we managed this with no problems at all, and just lazed the afternoon away as we waited for james to come home from work (not actually knowing what he looked like). We waited in the car and received a text, just about the same time as we saw a guy nearby texting on his phone and looking around ... for us it seems. We sheepishly exited our safe haven of Mo (our little car) and approached james, it seems he had the same idea as us, and we made our introductions. james then led us to the house and told us to make ourselves at home, and we did!! hehe, bloody backpackers always after freebies!!! He lives in alovely appartment with his girlfriend barbara and another roomie. We got to know each other over a couple of beers, and then went out for some food - which was absolutely gorgeous!!! James even, extremely graciously, paid for our meal. We had a really lovely evening, and are now waiting for them to come home from work to go out again!!! Today sarah and i spent the afternoon wondering around Auckland, we went to a boatshow at the harbour and saw the skytower, but very reluctantly we had to give up our car and revert back to crappy public transport, which true to form, was absolutely full of bloody weirdos!!! We fly to Sydney tomorrow at 6 am so we have to leave the flat at 4am!!!! Then, we have to hang aroung Sydney for 12 hrs before our 6hr long flight to Bali - luckily we have just managed to secure some sccommodation to make our night time introduction to Asia a little less intimidating!! So its goodbye Western comforts and hello non English speaking people!!! Ahhhhhhh!!!