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Thanks for all the birthday wishes by email/message board/Facebook! Much appreciated...
Monday started with a rather slow and frustrating drive around Auckland picking up passengers for the tour. We called at some hostels twice, had a couple of no-shows and 2 people had been booked on the wrong bus. We also had to change buses at Thames to a bigger one. This wasn't a big deal. Our driver did a big shop ready for a massive BBQ that night.
It would've been rude not to do some sort of activity on my birthday so we signed up for "The Best Kayaking Trip in New Zealand", which was indeed brilliant. The scenery was stunning (surprise, surprise) once again and our instructors Carlos and Marty were the two most enthusiastic people we've ever met.
Marty (shouting): "Dudes, we call this cave BIG CAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Carlos (also shouting): "Whoaaaa, this is one big cave! Sweet as bros"
I can't quite convey what they were really like, but they were certainly very happy to be alive and doing the trip with us.
In the evening we had our big BBQ, followed by 2 massive CAKES. I managed to blow the top of one cake into the salad. My blowing skills have obviously improved since I was 5. I'd bought a crate of beers earlier in the day so we spent the remainder of the evening drinking these and playing drinking games.
The following day I obviously wasn't feeling marvellous but onto Raglan we went. Again we stopped in a town to organise a big meal. Raglan is a small, chilled out surfing town. At school children have to start learning to surf from the age of 5 and have 2 lessons a week. Sure beats freezing your arse off playing rugby in the middle of January. I had my 2nd surfing lesson here and made massive strides towards becoming world champion. I caught the waves and got up on my board much easier - the helpful instructors and excellent equipment definitely helped. However, at the end of the lesson we were hit by an incredible hail storm. One of the instructors has been doing this for 8 years and this was only the second time he'd seen anything like it, and the other instructor said it was a once in a lifetime storm. It bloody hurt. It was all part of the fun though! Jo opted out of the surf lesson and had a walk round the forests by our hostel and watched some TV with the other girls on the trip. Jo was head chef for the evening and prepared our gigantic spag bol with me and some of the others.
Yesterday we headed to Waitomo which is famous for its glowworms and caves. We did the cheapest caving trip which lasted 4 hours and included caving, swimming and black water rafting sections. Black water rafting is nothing like white water rafting; there are no rapids, it just involves jumping in a big black ring, all holding onto each other and floating down a river in a cave. We saw loads of glowworms and stalagnites (like on Planet Earth on BBC) and learnt all about them. The instructors were great fun again, helping, soaking and scaring us in equal measure.
After a quick bite to eat we started heading to Rotorua where we are now. In the evening we went to a Maori (tribes who discovered/founded New Zealand) show/dinner which we had been told was fantastic. We were thoroughly disappointed. There were far too many people there, they kept going on about how we could take as many photos as we liked (you don't go to something like that just to take photos), the food was average and most of the people there were idiots, lapping up the gentle comedy. I think the problem is some of the travellers we've met may have gone a bit over the top about some of the attractions on offer so we're bound to be a little disappointed with a couple of them. I'm being a little harsh on last night, but it was definitely a rip-off. We thought about stealing the blankets and torches they provided but that would've been naughty.
This morning I did white water rafting with a free voucher we got for signing up for the tour. This was great fun but didn't last long enough. I can now say that I've done the tallest commercial white water rafting waterfall (what a mouthful!) at 7 metres in the world though. I've got some photos but I've forgotten to upload them with this set so I'll put them in the next lot. Jo's neck/back had started to get troublesome over the last few days so unfortunately she had to opt out of the rafting this morning to go to the doctors which we found before my trip. She then got a haircut to cheer herself up a bit and now she is fixed a raring to go for the Skydive in Taupo tomorrow. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit scared about it!
Right that's everything for the last few days. Hope all is well at home, and everyone isn't too unhappy about England continuing to be rubbish at football. Different manager, same old story. Bring back Beckham. Now.
Oh one last bit of awesome news - we might be going to the Boxing Day test of the Ashes! I'd like to say thankyou to the Bull family for being so massive. You've done well.
lots of love mike & jo xxx
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