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Monday mornings tend to suck, and if I had been back in the UK it would have really sucked, being the first Monday after half-time signalling the half way point in the year. But I wasn't and I didn't have to even contemplate teaching London's next generation of Dizzie Rascals. Nope this Monday the sun was shinning, the birds were singing and me and the lady we're heading out to complete the tour de France of vineyards, having acquired some bikes and grabbed a map we took off into the countryside hoping to sample as much wine as we could. Now I'm no connoisseur but by the end of it I was spouting off about how the "crisp acidity tightens up the palate giving great length". It was a brilliantly fun day, the only negative being the cheese induced nightmares we suffered that evening. They do say wine and cheese go 'hand in hand' but surely they don't mean literally 'hand (gulp, bite, gulp, bite) in hand!'
Our next stop was the town of Picton, it's where you catch the ferry to the North Island. It's also the entrance way to Marlborough Sounds, a collection of peninsulas and islands that fan out across the Cook Straight like the veins of a leaf. To explore we hitched a ride with the local mail man. A posties natural enemy is the household dog, and although on this route he needn't put his hand through any letterboxes the problem still existed. To tackle the issue of aggressive K9s rushing down the Jetty to bark and bite at him he had taken to bringing along a bag of doggy biscuits. At first he explained "positive results were seen immediately"But it seems that word had spread throughout the animal kingdom and so what greets you as you deliver the post is a farmyard of animals including pigs, goats, chickens and of course dogs waiting patiently at the waters edge of a bite to eat.
After the ferry to the North Island we drove to 'Mount Doom!' A famous landscape in the Lord of the Rings. I can't remember what significance it plays in the films or why it was called Mount Doom what I can tell you is that for the purpose of Rachel's experience hiking up it the name is wholly fitting. I will allow those of you who know Rachel to imagine her struggle and say no more on the matter. Eventually we reached the summit and it was well worth it as the mountain is actually a active volcano with smoke seeping from the top and is so volcano snapped that it is if it is the blue print for all other volcanos, in that it is completey cone shaped.
On the move again we headed to a place famous for glow worms and booked a 'black water rafting' trip which involves floating down an underground river on rubber tubes, through caves full of glow worms and occasionally jumping of a waterfall. This was a really good laugh and to Rachel's relief was nothing at all like her canyoning experience. The previous night we had also decided to go to a nearby area where after the sun goes down you can see glow worms for free without clambering through caves. This is where I managed to frighten a little Japanese couple half to death. As we drove into the car park I had noticed the couple emerging from the woodland having obviously just visited the glow worms, eager to obtain directions from them I hopped from the still moving van (although Rachel had almost come to a halt). Except at the time I had been in the process of putting on a pair of trousers over my shorts (salmon pink shorts of course), my attire also consisted of an old Brown wife beater (a vest to those of you not up to date with modern street lingo) and a trucker baseball cap, my appearance came off as 'hill Billy chic'. Rachel insists that I must add that I had had several glasses of wine that afternoon and was a little squiffy, but I must insist that on this occasion I was holding my liquor admirably. Anyway existing a moving vehicle, with my trousers round my knees, slightly intoxicated, staggering towards them at pace, slurring something about glow worms froze them to the spot. After what seemed like intolerable amount of silence (but what could only have been 10 seconds) I regained my composure and eloquently asked for a precise set of directions in order to peruse the glow worms. They responded by slowly raising their fingers simultaneously and pointing to the bush they had just came from. I tipped my hat thanking them for their assistance and bid them farewell. They didn't stop to see if we'd found the entrance way as the screeched out of the car par (I think maybe in tears!)
The next couple of days seemed like a blur as we travelled the length and breadth of the North Island, during which we: did a sky dive over lake Taupo; went to Hobbiton (the village Frodo and Bilbo Baggins live in the Lord of the Rings, and to my disappointment there were no midgets running around in costume); made our own hot water spas on the aptly named 'hot water beach' by digging pits in the sand and letting the hot spring water fill them; sand boarded down a giant sand dune on 90 mile beach; drove miles to see famous giant trees but couldn't find them; saw countless geothermal pools, lakes, craters and geysers; and spent an evening at a traditional Maori village where after no one was willing to be the chief of our (the tourists) tribe, Rach volunteered me by doing the old school yard trick of pointing to me behind my back. Fingered an unable to refuse I had to stand on stage in front of several hundred people, while a Maori warrior did his best to scare me with an acrobatic war dance after which I had to except his peace offering (a twig) and give a speech on behalf of the audience to the Maori chief.
We ditched our van in Auckland having driven five and a half thousand kilometres in it. We spent two days there before flying back to Christchurch and back to the same hostel we spent our first nights in New Zealand. Tomorrow we leave, flying to Singapore before meeting my parents in Borneo, all I can say is New Zealand has been incredible.
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