Sing when you're winning!

Hi all, sorry for the delay in posting, we have been busy getting back from the South Island, Up North again. We are now back in Auckland, well on the outskirts really and we will stay here until we take The Shed back on Saturday, once we've done that we have booked to stay in a Hostel in the centre of Auckland for Saturday night, ready to jet off to Fiji on Sunday, woo hoo!!

The last time I blogged we were in the Abel Tasman Region and the weather was a bit naff, well luckily for us it picked up. We managed to get to a campsite with views overlooking the sea and there we booked our trip to the Abel Tasman National Park, for anybody that looks at our pics on Flickr you've probably seen the place already.

You are taxied by a boat round the coast line taking in all the wildlife reserves and stunning beaches. The seas were green and the sands golden, it was also gloriously sunny this particular day which we were really pleased about. We then got dropped off at a beach literally in the middle of the National Park and told where we are to meet up again 4 hours later. We then did a 10k walk through the park and round the coast line, it was great although a little muddy underfoot due to all the rain. We had our lunch on the beach with the waves lapping round our ankles, amidst the sand flies. We then walked further along the coast to a place called Anchorage where we had arranged to be picked up it was a really nice day, we were cream crackered when we got back.

There have been a few earthquakes whilst we have been in NZ, nothing major according to the locals and they are also not uncommon. Anyway the day after we had our jaunt out we were asleep in the camper it was about 7.30, and all of a sudden it started to judder for about 10 seconds, it felt like there was somebody rocking it from side to side (there wasn't as we looked out of the window to check!) after speaking to a local guy at one of the campsites, we told him where we were and he advised that we had probably felt the tremors from one of the quakes. Fancy that!!

After Abel Tasman we drove up to Nelson, a busy place for NZ. We went to the cinema to watch The Kingdom (great film) and swapped lots of books that we had accumulated at a second hand book shop, then it started to rain again. It seems for every dry 24 hours you have you have to endure 48 hours of rain. So we headed for the nearest and driest place we could find, which just so happened to be a pub!! complete coincidence. It turned into a good night, we managed to sample many of the beers from the nearby Macs brewery. I can't remember much of the night once we left there ;-)

The next day (still in Nelson) we hired some mountain bikes from the campsite and headed out to the next nearest town which was about 25k (I'm out of breath now just thinking about it!) Again it was a lovely sunny day, but it was blowing a gale, not ideal biking conditions for two lazy office workers!! But we managed it, we stopped off for a fresh fruit ice cream and strawberries on the way which made the whole day completely worthwhile, it was yummy! We got back late afternoon like a couple of cripples, we could hardly walk. We cooked our tea, polished of a bottle of wine and hit the sack at about 8 o'clock, proper rock and roll lifestyle!

After Nelson we headed back up to Picton as we were to catch the ferry that day (Saturday) back to the North Island. We had hoped to stay a few more days on the South originally, but due to bad weather and cold temperatures at night we decided that it would be better to head North where it is always a few degrees warmer. The ferry crossing was plain sailing (no pun intended) and we got back to Wellington mid afternoon. We then headed up the West coast and decided to stop of when we had had enough of driving, which wasn't long as we had been up since 6.30 and was a bit tired, we stayed at a place beginning with O?? (I 'm sorry but I have completely lost track of all the different places we've stayed as the names are all in Maori) Next day we hit the road again and continuing North stopped off again at Lake Taupo, it was a lovely sunny and even warm day so we sat out for a bit before we set off for a place called Matamata where we stayed the night.

After this we headed up to The Coromandel Peninsula, which is kind of East of Auckland, and not an area we stopped at on the way down. A few people we had met on the camp sites had said how nice it is so we decided with the extra days spare we had from the South Island we would spend up here. Well it didn't really do anything for us to be honest, it was just full of drab little places along the coast with nothing much in the way of entertainment (For all you Northerners imagine Paull in winter?!?!?) The only hustle and bustle we came across were some road works. We carried on to Coromandel and stayed there a night, again the weather was really hot and sunny so we got our deck chairs out and had a lazy day absorbing some much needed rays.

After Coromandel we went to Haihi which is another small coastal resort with absolutely nothing to do, not even a supermarket. We got another beach side site and had ANOTHER lazy day doing nothing in particular except reading and cryptic cross word puzzles. Oh yeah and Matt had picked up a newspaper so he has been catching up with all the Rugby news, a bit of comedy always help eh!
We left Haihi this morning and here we are..

So the rugby.. I'm not big into Rugby Union to be honest or league for that matter, although I do get regular updates from my dad who is an avid FC fan. All I can compare the All Blacks defeat to is 9/11. They are absolutely gutted by the result, every day the headlines are about the team, their performance and their future. They were so confident that they would win it this time round that most of them have been saving for years to make the trip to Europe, buy tickets to the final, and one guy has even had a tattoo done on his leg of dates and some other nonsense.It really is a tragedy for the Kiwis, it will be a long time before they recover from it, if they ever do? As for the England result, me and Matt are both made up, especially as we will be out there at the end of October. The Ozzies are also taking it quite badly, especially loosing to The Britz. All we hope now is that we can beat France on Sunday and get through to the final. We will also be rooting for Argentina too.

We fly to Fiji on Sunday at 2 o'clock, so we should hopefully be stripped off and on the beach for 5 o'clock he he! I cant wait to buy some sun tan cream and mozzie spray and get my summer togs out from the hidden depths of my ruck sack, I was beginning to think they would never see the light of day.

Bring on Fiji...