Christmas Day

Started the day with a fry and some present opening. I even got a CD from Mairead and Nathan of a Kiwi band. Sounds great. We then headed off in Dave's car to a viewing point over the whole city and got a real sense of the place. It was mad to see people on the beach on Christmas Day. All very surreal!

Then it was off to Mairead's friends Fiona's to sit on a large balcony in the sun watching a great view drinking jugs of ice cold Pimms. For starters we had a curry cheese dip baked in a loaf of bread. Absolutely delicious. Then we had a selection of creamy roast veg and veggie food all delicious including yummy sweet potatoes totally different than at home. I made a dodgy gravy but luckily I warned everyone to taste it before putting it on their dinner and ruining Christmas!

Then we all but rolled down a hill to a lovely wood that was more like a rainforest to build up an appetite for desert. Desert was a mouth watering chocolate mousse. We ended the night playing board games which were good fun even if our brains had slowed down to close to comatosed with all the food, sun and constant drink .

Most definitely the strangest Christmas I ever had even though the feeling of relaxing inactivity and over eating and drinking was very familiar. Great crack.

P.S. They have cool trees here. I can't remember the name of them and the flowers only come out on them at Christmas - bright red -pictured.

Christmas Eve

We got up and had coffee while listening to reggae in the sunshine, it couldn't be more Christmasy!

We got the train at the station and sat back on our seven hour trip to Wellington. It was really excellent with big windows and a viewing lounge and running commentary on everything interesting that was coming along. We crossed some really cool and high viaducts and passed some massive scenery. We managed not to crash off the bridge that the same train had drove off the same day and time 58 years before!

The best sight though was old Kevin who stands out waving the train everyday as it passes. Today he had a big Santa bag and was jumping up and down waving like all his christmases had come at once.

We were welcomed in Wellington by Mairead and Nathan who took us on a quick coastal drive of Wellington. On first impressions it looks like Wellington has the beautiful harbours and hilly beauty of Sydney with the Bohemian vibes and similar streets to Melbourne. Well cool city to live in.

Back in Mairead and Nathan's place we had a BBQ with delicious veggie sausages and falafels. Mairead's friends came over and it was great to talk to people who live here and have a bit of crack.

Oh, apparently nobody has ever heard of a tradition of putting luminous decorations on graves so looks like I might have been hallucinating there!

National Park 2

Wow what a day. We got taken to the start of the crossing at 7 in the morning and started walking taking a number of photos of the amazing scenery. We were told that if you kept a good pace you could climb the large volcano but it was a tough climb but instead you could climb Mount Tongariro as another side project but only about one in ten of these experienced hikers ever did that with only about one in a hundred doing the volcano. Colin wanted us to do the volcano. After we climbed the Devil's staircase, a tough hours long staircase climb, I was thinking we would just stick to the crossing. In the end we compromised for climbing Mount Tongariro.

At the top of Mount Tongariro I met Santa Claus and his wife on a bit of a hike before the busy season ahead!

We returned then to do the rest of the crossing passing a massive red crater and sliding down scree to three emerald lakes. We then had lunch at a big bright duck egg blue lake. Finally we turned the corner to see a view of Lake Taupo and all it's surrounds.

That is the details but what is really hard to describe are the views we experienced. It was like being on a few different planets. Completely breathtaking and just when you thought what you had seen was the most amazing sight in your life another view would trump it. Each little part of the crossing would have tourists coming for miles in Ireland.
The walk was tough and I feel now like all the jet lag has hit me at once with legs like jelly but at the time you are so hypnotised by the views you don't care. Best experience so far.

Found out from Aideen there were earthquakes in Christchurch (we were blissfully unaware) so hoping our hostel is still standing there!

National Park

We arrived in the National Park after a bus journey with a completely crazy bus driver at 3. We found the hostel and soon discovered there was absolutely nothing to do in the town so we decided to give the climbing wall in the hostel a try. It was great crack but we were useless at it, only able to do the beginners wall barely.

We then got chatting with a few people and ended up playing card games with them each one with a rude name for it's title. We headed to bed early to be up for the big hike the next day.

Rotorua

Started the day well with pancakes and damn fine coffee. Then after some consideration decided to first head to Tepui. This was a national park full of bubbling steaming mud baths, a couple of kiwis and a big geyser. The tour guide gave us an overview of Maori culture and history and we also got a performance of a collection of Maori dances and songs. Fantastic place that looked like you could film the set of a whole series of Star Trek in it and all the cool colours: bright pinks and yellows in the rocks and turquoise and ash white lakes with bubbling grey mud made it totally unique.

After a bit of lunch we hired some bikes and headed to the Redwood Forest. As we cycled up an endless hill and I felt I was going to be reacquainted with my lunch from exhaustion, I wondered if I needed to face the fact that my instance of cycling being for me was misguided as I always end up near dead with complete prostration. This all changed though when we hit the tracks. It was an adrenal rush of twists, turns bumps and splashes that was like a roller coaster in a forest. It had us laughing all the way. The only worrying part was when we had being going for about a half hour on a track and hadn't reached an end. Thoughts of the plot of Blair Witch Project started to flash through my mind till finally we emerged back on the road. We both pledged to take up mountain biking when we got home (but the bruising from the saddle has since made me reconsider).

Afterwards we went to the local lake and found about ten black swans, what are the chances!

After a soothing hot pool dip in the hostel we hit the town for grub and pub. Got a nice meal and found a good blues rock band but finished the night in a late bar full of drunken twenty year olds from the adjacent hostel. This made us feel very old but glad we'd booked the quiet hostel down the road.

Rotorua was totally safe and quiet but the fact that the police station was massive and that some pubs had signs saying no gang paraphernalia made me think there was a side to the town we were (gladly) missing out on.

New Zealand

After a bit of a caffuffle with buses and an obstacle course of security checks I finally made it on to my plane. Sadly before leaving I had to say goodbye to Niall, Ma and Da.

As the plane flew into New Zealand I knew this was going to be a whole different kettle of fish. The land was green and hilly like home but instantly more spectacular and the lake we passed over had shades of bright green and turquoise in it.

Met Col who was thrilled to finally switch of his Blackberry and start holidaying. With in minutes a guy was chatting with us who I recognised as the guy who was been given out to by the captain of the plane for leaving his seat in landing and then giving cheek. He proceeded to tell us how he was an ex con deported from Oz for bank robbery and had just been denied access back for Christmas to meet his sister. He then proceeded to give us all the advice we would need for travelling NZ including claiming that our first destination Rotorua was crap and that we would probably be mugged by Maoris. Then at one scary moment it looked like he might actually be coming with us to Rotorua to stay in our hostel but luckily changed his mind. Friendly guy but just a bit unnerving.

Bus journey was dark so not much to see but did notice that the graves in graveyards seem to all have illuminous decorations on them! For a split second I thought Rotorua was on fire when we arrived till I remembered it was steam from the hot pools. Then we thought we might be sleeping in the streets as the hostel was all locked up. Luckily someone arrived to let us in. Nice hostel situated safely between the cop shop and the firing range (they even have wheelchair access)!

Last day in Melbourne

Decided not to have a drink today and see some sights so me, Niall and Da headed off to go on a walking tour only to find out that we needed to pre book. The start of the tour was meant to be the Immigration Museum so we decided to at least go to that and paid ten dollars to be depressed in a visually impressive way.

To cheer us up a bit we decided to go to an exhibition on Space in Film. We bought our tickets in the Moving Image Gallery and went to its permanent exhibition which was most impressive with a history of film and plenty of memorabilia from various movies such as Mad Max. I went into a booth that videoed me in a Matrix style (video to follow). The most impressive exhibit though was a spinning wheel with various characters in different stages of animation. The magic happened when a strobe light came on and the characters came alive (must see video to come). The actually space exhibition wasn't as impressive in comparison. Another novel scene was people out on deck chairs in the main square enjoying the sun while watching Miracle on 34th St. I tell you it's like a parallel universe.

To end the evening we kept with the film theme and decided to go to third largest cinema screen in the world to watch Mission Impossible Four. Although the film was standard enough the screen was impressive. Bizarrely a giant bat landed on the screen and looked like an annoying fly on a TV screen. Once again a mad country for animals.