In NZ

An exciting day at Rockhampton Airport when we discovered that our flight was wrongly booked for 2 weeks later.  The Virgin Blue person (note the polite term) refused to change it but offered new tickets for 400 quid.  Fortunately the Quantas desk was much more helpful and we got tickets with them for half the price.  Travel agent is investigating and will refund.  The panic was about not getting to NZ.  We were lucky cos it was a Friday - busy travelling day.

Arrived in early hours of 14th and got to our luxury apartment (complete with washing machine and dishwasher).  The Medical School team had provided us with lots of shopping - wonderful - and a hire car. Auckland is a fairly ordinary new city - nothing much to say about it except it does have some nice parkland and lots of ferries to outlying islands.

Spent the first weekend exploring north of Auckland with beaches and a visit to a kauri tree - these were one of the bases of NZ's wealth and were almost wiped out between 1880 and 1920.  The one in the picture is about 800 years old, so they take a while to regenerate!  Also went to a kuari museum which was not just all about trees but a whole social history - very interesting.  Lovely scenery, rolling hills and sharp craggy bits.  The beaches were great - sat and watched gannets diving here.

Chris spent the week working while Judy did the sights.  We also had some work to do to check measurement for the house in France, a lot of which were slightly wrong so took some sorting out - hope they're right now!  Hashed with Auckland Hussies on the Tuesday night (Judy walked) - very jolly.

The picture is of a lava field on the most recent volcanic island (only 600 years old).  I spent the day just walking around including the summit - quite spectacular.  Apparently the Maoris on the neighbouring island watched it appear.  It was especially good because I'd been to the Auckland museum (amazing place - 3 hours and I still hadn't seen it all) and seen a volcano exhibition which included sitting in a house while a volcanic eruption was taking place!

This weekend we went up to the Coromandel peninsula and visited Hot Water Beach where you are supposed to able to dig your hole and have a warm spring fill it.  Could only do this in a couple of places (grossly over-rated) and Cathedral Cove (beautiful!) this one you walked down a cliff path and could only get to via the arch below from another beach.  Even the walk down was pretty.

Today was a bit wet to start so we booked lots of stuff on the internet, then went west to see the coast and a waterfall.  The coast was really wild - quite different to what we'd seen before.  The walk to the waterfall took some finding including stopping at the local cop shop (they handily provided us with maps) and stopping to ask a local.  However once found the walk was lovely but spent so long looking for it we didn't have time to do it all.
The holiday starts tomorrow, more news later.