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Rightyo peeps heres our last entry from New Zealand, can you believe we have spent over 5 weeks here, man times fly's!
O.K. so the next stop was New Zealand's biggest city Auckland, where over a million people live. Now considering theres only 4 million people in the whole of NZ, its a pretty different place to everywhere we have visited over here. Before arriving in NZ I was given the phone number of some family which I had living in Auckland, so a few weeks before arriving I gave them a call. Best call ever! After a couple of phone calls to my second cousin Jakes(I think thats what we worked out we were to each other), we had a place to stay, tickets to an All Blacks game and an invite to a birthday lunch, and a fishing trip planned. We were swept off our feet and very impressed.
We arrived on the Saturday and Jakes picked us up from airport. After a teary goodbye to Evie we headed back to his place to meet the family. This was where Linz got very excited as not only does Jakes and Fiona have two great little kids in Jasmin (7) and Zach (3) but they have a 6 month your old little beauty called Savanna. Aftre a couple of beers and catching up we headed off to watch a little know team called the All Blacks!!! It was the 1st test of the season and the stadium was full to capacity with screaming Kiwi's! Although they were playing France, a pretty handy side, the touring party was made up of debutants and so it was a pretty easy game for the All Blacks, winning by over 25 points. The main highlight was seeing a Haka in NZ, it was awesome, if i was opposite them when chanting I would totally s**t my pants! However this didn't seem to dent the French confidence as one of the players, Chabal put in one of the biggest hits I've seen. He totally munched his opposite number 8 he could barely stand after. He is know Linz's fav player, although he kinda looks like a caveman with long hair and a full beard, sort it out Linz! After the game we hit a couple fo bars and then back on the ferry to Davenport where we were staying. Now this was quite funny in itself as Jakes had sorted us out to stay at his mates batchelor flat. One of the flat mates was away in Spain so we had his room. When we arrived back, the house was full of fellas drinking and watching the rolling stones (you would have loved it dad). After the stones it was more beers and yachting, which after a crash course from the lads I know kinda get?!??!?!? As Fiona said the next day, the place is like a 20 year old's flat however these guys were the wrong side of 40. I now have something to aspire to......
The next day we headed over to Jakes mum's, Helen. Now I'm not too sure what relation she is to me but she was married to my Nan's Brother, Great Auntie maybe? It was Helens birthday and so a few of the family came round for lunch. Here I managed to meet Surrey and David, of which Surrey is Jakes sister and again my second Cousin, every out there confused yet? Also there were Surrey and David's children, Isabelle, Timmy, Matt and George. Phew now I thinks thats it for the extended family!!! We had a top lunch catching up and eating some fine grub. There was even some post lunch football of the park with jumpers for goalposts, dads and sons, small dogs chasing the ball, thats over, no I didn't jump, Ramsey's wingless wonders, hmmmp hmmp..... Sorry guys broke into Ron manager from the Fast Show there, bet you were confused! With our stomachs bursting and tons of photos taken we headed back to the flat to sloth for the evening as we were up early the next day for fishing in the harbor.
Half asleep we headed out on Jakes boat with a couple of his mates for our debut in the world of fishing. Now considering me and Linz have never been before we wern't expecting much and to our surprise Linz landed a whopper straight away. It was a beauty, really flat, green in color and oh yeah it was a t-shirt!!! I think everyone was well impressed as they said they had never caught a t-shirt before. However that was about as good as got at the first 4 or 5 stops and we were begining to give up hope until we moved to our last pitch and one of Jakes mates caught a snapper. This gave us hope and it wasn't long before I was battling away and too caught a Red Snapper, which I might add was the biggest catch of the day. In the end I managed to get 2 Snapper and one which just got away at the last moment. Poor old Linz though wasn't as fortunate as she did hook a couple and even got one to the surface, which was a monster, however both times her line snapped, leaving her to experience the pain of the ones which got away. Later that evening we had dinner round Jakes and Fiona's and ate what we caught during the day, it was awesome one of the best meals we have had since being away, even Linz enjoyed her t-shirt!!!! Thanks again guys!!!
The following day was our last in New Zealand and even if that wasn't emotional enough I got a call from mum which I had hoped I wasn't going to get the whole time I have been away. It was the sad news that poor old Bobby (our dog) had passed away. Although to start off I was obviously upset , we have now had time to remember the fun things and all the memories he left with us. Good on ya Bobman you will be missed you legend!
O.k. so thats the final update from NZ, sorry it has taken a while blog fans, but we have been stuck in Fiji on a beach, shame. Next is the updates from paradise so check it out!
Laters
Grant
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