Hey guys,

Well, we are waiting at Auckland airport, and have gone through check in.

This time I stayed cool, and pleaded lenience with Qantas due to British Airways completely landing us in the smelly stuff. They were extremely helpful and understanding. They took photocopies of our itinerary, and after a bit of chatting to other people, charged us a paltry $84 which equals about £30…! I must say I was totally stunned seeing as the weight we are over is 85kg… Many thanks to Qantas for this…. now we only have to repeat the process one more time in 6 weeks on our way home.

My final thoughts on New Zealand. Its quiet, beautiful… stunningly so… and few and far between towns where you can do stuff. Great place if you like walking through hills, or checking out scenery. But for me, being the kind of person that I am, I need more stimulus, and I now realise how much I despise big cities, traffic, cars etc.

Being on Koh Tao running full steam doing something every minute of every day, working our butts off studying, diving, assisting, climbing, paintball, motorbiking…was hard but so rewarding, and I think New Zealand has a much slower pace of life than we have been used to these last 4 months. Its hard to adjust.

Anyway, 2850km travelled in New Zealand at a breakneck speed, White Island and the Canyon Swing were major highlights, and we look onwards to further adventures in Australia. Hotel tonight and pick up new camper tomorrow. See you on the next internet connection!!!

SD

We camped at a park near the caves last night, and woke up to a nice sunny day. We then drove 200km into the centre of Auckland where trying to park a camper van turned out to be a £^$*ing nightmare.!

The reason for this, was that British Airways have passed the buck, and have put the blame for excess baggage charges we had to pay in Bangkok (300 quid!) in the hands of Qantas. After visiting their offices in central Auckland and speaking to them… I disagree. British Airways itinerary is wrong, and they know its wrong because they have recently added a sentence to the itinerary stating that other airlines determine my baggage allowance also…. Now this was not on my itinerary that I printed out before we left the UK, and I am now starting to smell something rotten in this whole fiasco.

The only evidence I have, is our itinerary which I printed from BA’s website before we left the UK, and I guess I had better guard it with my life because when tomorrow comes and we have to board a flight to Melbourne, we could potentially be having to fork out £2500 for excess baggage charges…. Oh joy!! Legal battle when I come back then…..

Anyway, now parked on the outskirts of Auckland, having a beer and trying to calm down!

Next stop Melbourne!

SD

Well…. what a dissapointment Zorbing turned out to be!!!

We turned up to a very small hill with the zorbs at the top, and us being the “life on the edge” kinda folk… we turned our noses up and moved on West.

We drove to a place called Waitomo Caves, a massive network of caves… totally massive!

In parts of the Waitomo Caves, they have something called Black Water Rafting. Basically, you stick a helmet on your head, go into the cave, wade into FREEZING water, jump on a rubber tube, and generally freeze your ass off until 3 hours of climbing, walking and tubing…… you finally appear at an exit for the cave.

I must say it was an experience. The feeling of claustrophobia, the freezing water… we still wonder if we enjoyed it!! I haven’t been that cold in years.! Before we entered the cave, they tested our ability to deal with the cold water by making us jump into a river that feeds into the cave. It was so cold that one guy stopped breathing for 20 seconds or so… Bit of a scary moment…!

Anyway we survived it… cold and shivering we retired to our camper.