After a long flight from Chile, crossing over the date line (consequently missing out Sunday!) we arrived in New Zealand early morning to be greeted by a tired and grumpy Mike Ryan (ex-Reigate Grammar gappy). After a quick power nap I spent the morning finding great amusement watching Jack worrying and calling the airport looking for his passport that he had misplaced, knowing full well that it was in my pocket!

In the afternoon Mike gave us our first lesson in New Zealand way of life: jumping off s***! We swam out from the nudist beach located below New Zealand rugby coach Graham Henry's house, to a light house and proceeded to jump from the 3 story ladder.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of a quick tour around Auckland city which was pretty cool, but very small as it was roughly the size of Guildford. After our tour we got a few beers and watched the super bowl. After that we pretty much chilled out and crashed out early because of the jet lag.

Day 12, our second day was slightly less eventful. However, the evening was an awesome one. Mike got a big group of lads over and we all decided that we would go see the 20/20 cricket, England vs New Zealand. After the match (where we destroyed the Kiwis, which was very satisfying!) and a few too many beers we hit the bars for a big night, this is where we learnt lessons two and three: Drinking s*** and gettting into s***! After a pretty rank shot which consisted of half tobasco sauce and half vodka, we managed to get started on by a very very big Maori guy! Unfortunatly, in my drunken state i found this slightly amusing which was a bit of an error as he didnt like it when i laughed at him! After this we got a taxi and then legged it as we had no money left, lesson four: running away from s***!

The following day Jack and i decided to rent our car and do the rest of New Zealand as a massive road trip! So we said our goodbyes to Mike and his family and headed down to Whakatane (pronounced f***-a-tarny, something i found highly amusing). We took the beautiful ocean route, even if we did miss about five vital turnings because Wheeler is a bit of a muppet! After Whakatane we headed down south to Rotorua. Rotorua turned out to be a big dissapointment as tehre was very little to do, and due to the sulpher in the area from the mud baths, every couple of minutes would get a big woft of s*** smelling gas passing you!

On day 14 we decided to leave the smelly and dissapointing Rotorua and head to the Waitomo glow worm caves. This was an amazing tour through the Waitomo Caves("Meaning water going through hole in the ground"in Maori) looking at all the geological formations, Ian Mann would probably be so happy he would cry...again! Then at the end of the tour, they take you on a short boat ride into a cavern where the entire ceiling is lit up by 30.000 tiny glow worms, which was very impressive. After the glow worms we decided to head south to Tongariro and stay there so that we could get up early doors and do the crossing.