Kia Ora all :-)

I suppose it would be an idea to write down the events of last night; it may have some comic value and it will be a useful reminder of probably the best night we've had in NZ.

It all started when John (the owner of the B&B) told us about this quirky little cafe just around the corner, who did fantastic pizzas to take away. Following a very quick plan involving pizzas, garlic bread and wine John phoned up the cafe (he's on first name terms with them!) and ordered our pizzas. This was 6:30 pm, and we said we'd collect them at 7. So what do you do while you're waiting for your tea to be cooked? Drink wine of course! After about 3 glasses of wine, we remembered that we were all hungry, getting rather drunk, and should really go and pick the pizzas up (it was now 7:15). Stumbling round the corner we (Nathan, Nat, John and Loki) arrived at the cafe to be met by a very, very drunk woman. "Just finishing the vege pizza" she said - "3 glasses of wine coming up - red or white?" Of course, you dont ever want to pee off a drunk woman who is in possession of a rather large vegetable knife, has the look of being slightly deranged, and is cooking (or attempting to) your food. So we said "yes please" to 3 more glasses, and sat outside.

Whilst waiting, the mother of the slightly deranged, very drunk, 'please-don't-gob-on-our-pizzas' woman came out to sell us some unborn Jack Russel puppies. She also pointed out to Nat her obvious lack of nail varnish on her little toes, having painted both her big toenails bright orange. And also the fact she'd forgotten to put her shoes on; a fact not gone amiss by Nat when she looked down to amire woman's said toenails and their lack of colour. It was slighly easier to convince this drunk that we didn't really want to buy a JR puppy ("but they're really small" she insisted...?) and as she was not carrying any sharp implements, we stood our ground. Realising she maybe wasn't going to get rid of at least one unborn pup, she left us in peace (and went off in search of a further source of alcohol)

It was now 7:45 and we were joined at our table by an eldery gentleman, who's skin was a tanned as a brazillian beauty (with the appearance of raw leather - yuk). Having parked his Ford V8 conveniently close to the cafe door, he had managed to locate a glass of beer before landing with a thud at our table. As with all the previous women we'd met so far on our quest for pizza, he was drunk. Very drunk. But, before we were able to get deep into conversation about whatever it was he was blabbering on about, our pizzas were finally ready. Nathan quickly went inside to pay, and almost had to help the woman with the till, sadly she managed to get the bill right even though at this point in time she was unable to stand still without swaying. All 4 of us walked home reasonably quickly; we wanted the pizza to be hot, and we also thought neither drunk women, or the old man, would be able to follow us if we were blurry (due to rapid movements), and there was no way on this honeymoon we were going to be terrorised by a derranged, knife-weilding pizza maker into buying her mum's unborn JR puppies, whilst painting her remaining toe nails orange, and avoiding the other drunk bloke's attempt at parking his car...

Whether it was the now 5 glasses of wine we'd each now consumed, the sheer relief of getting away from the cafe alive, or our increasing hunger and need for nutrition, the pizzas were delicious! And we didn't manage to eat much, as we ended up drinking more of the red stuff. Hey ho...

So this morning we were picked up at stupid 0'clock for our geothermal trip round a few parks in the local area. We saw loads of cool stuff like boiling mud pools, hot rivers, blue pools etc etc... see the photos for a better understanding! The smell of sulphur will be forever ingrained in our hair/our cothes and our memories - it is rank! No matter how beautiful the scenery, the amazing ability of this compound to make you heave is astonishing, And this had nothing to do with the consumption of wine last night (we think).

After lunch, John very kindly took us to the local Redwood forest. He did offer his car for us to drive, but volunteered to drop us off and pick us up when we admitted neither of us had ever driven an automatic. The redwoods were incredible - so atmospheric and magestic, and despite getting lost (!) we had a great afternoon wandering around in proper forest.

And then, this evening we've been drinking (again) - hence why this blog is a bit um... patchy. Todays events are written a full 3 hours after the first half of this blog was started, and since then a very respectable 3 glasses of good red stuff have been drunk. And we're both a bit tired, so will leave the blog here and go to bed. Now that is a plan :-) Night all x x x x x x x x Will edit this tomorrow to make it good :-)