Hi to you all - I do hope you are well.

This week has been leading up to my flight out of New Zealand. Since I last wrote on this site I visited an old friend and spent a couple of days catching up in Hamilton, a city about 2 hours away from Auckland; rejoining the Magic bus in Auckland to explore the Bay of Island, Pihia and Cape Reigna (which is right at the top of New Zealand; and finally back again to Auckland to plan for the next part of the trip to sunny Singapore.

In Hamilton, I met Jane, an ex-colleague from Walworth. For those of you that knew her, she is doing well, working in a school in Hamilton and has just bought a house. It was really nice to catch up with her. The city of Hamilton is another standard NZ town; it has a small airport, so I was lucky in that I didn't have to bus it from Wellington. I had to get a connecting flight from Auckland, in order to get to Hamilton - the plane that did this journey was the smallest plane I've ever been on - there were 20 seats. There were 8 people on the plane - 3 of whom were airline employees. It was a short 20 min flight - no need to tell you there was no inflight movie.

After a few days with Jane and not living in a hostel with lots of strangers, I packed up and made my way back to Auckland. The following day I got back on the Magic bus to Pihia and Cape Reinga - not much to report as the weather was truly awful; it wasn't New Zealand at its best.

The trip to Cape Reinga was marred by a bit of my own stupidity. We were taken to some sand dunes to do some sandboarding. I was on the but with lots of people I didn't know, so I decided to take valuables with me. You know wallet, sunglasses..... camera. Anyway by the time I'd finished witht he sandboarding the camera didn't work. I spend the rest of the trip trying and failing to make it work. At this point I just wanted to get back to Auckland to try to replace the bloody thing. I was so annoyed with myself. Once I got the camera replaced I felt much better.

Despite the long bus journeys and not meeting anybody really apart from Brits I've really enjoyed being in New Zealand. The scenery of the country lived up to expectation. It was brilliant to meet the few New Zealanders that I did get to meet - most seemed like genuinely nice people.

Today is the last day I spent in New Zealand. I'll spend it sorting out my packing for the next destination - Singapore. So I finally got rid of my terrible black jacket, my scarf, the horrid jumper bought in Greymouth. Thirty two degrees Celcius, here I come. Apparently there is nothing but rain in Singapore for the next 4 days but at least it will be warm...

See you next time... x