Greetings everybody from Auckland,

Well first of all i would like to put peoples mind at ease cos Non and i both survived the sky jump!!!! The picture above is the view from the top of the sky tower which we jumped from so this is what we had to calm our nerves before hand.

It has been a hectic couple of weeks in New Zealand and the pace has only just slowed down as we will be staying here in Auckland untill we fly to meet columbo in LA. So we finally managed to meet up with Becci and Nonnie in Rotorua and it was really greaT TO SEE SOME (sorry) friendly faces when we arrived after a punishing 5 hour drive from Wellington. The morning after we wanted to use one of our discount coupons and go white water rafting down the highest raftable water fall in the world but there were'nt enough people so we couldn't instead me and Non went zorbing, were you climb inside a giant inflatable ball fill it with warm water and get rolled down a hill. Zorbing was awesome for anyone interested and not even scary, matbe claustrophobic if you are a sufferer. There is a zorb challenge that you have to run all the way down but we didn't get too far cos Non knocked me over, which he denies of course.

After that we drove to Matamata to do the hobbiton tour and then on to the hot water beach which was also very cool. What you do is wait for the tide to get out then dig a hole to fill with lovely warm fresh water and have a bath on the beach. Unfortunately the water was far to hot so being engineers and arrogant british people we took over a load of space and formed a series of pools and channels which could be opened and closed to let in water at the perfect temperature :)

From there we drove to Auckland home of the sky tower and the sky jump. This is basically where you get attached to a wire and jump of the sky tower from 192 metres in the air, then when you reach tyhe bottom a fan brings you to a leisurely stop at the bottom. The coolest thing was we got a free 2nd jump because there cameras weren't working they neglected to Becci and Tegan to come watch so after the first one where you're thinking i wanna go again they come to us and say we're gonna give you a second jump for free, YAY.

Unfortunately Bex and Non left us this morning for the warmer climates of Fiji and that is all that happened, speack soon Toby

x