Gidday Folks,

Well, Deirdre & I have been travelling (slacking) for a while so thought we'd give you guys a bit of an update. We've made it as far as Nelson on our tour of the South Island. Deirdre has been having trouble with her eyes so she's having them looked at at the moment, so I'm being a nerd & typing this in a cafe whilst I wait. Guys, you know how it is, we're always waiting.

Anyway, we got to Nelson yesterday & went sailing in a yacht race last night. It started out really calm, with about 20 other yachts, then the wind picked up to about 30 knots and the main sail ripped. Never mind, we carried on with just the head sail for a while until a big gust swung the boat around, and the boom of the sail at the stern (mizzen?) swung round and smacked a guy off balance who landed on his shoulder and hurt it pretty bad. Anyway, that pretty much put us out the race, but they say bad luck comes in threes, and this proved right as one of the girls lost her camera over the side when we had just docked back in the berth. Still, we survived intact, camped last night, and this morning the German couple beside us had their touring bikes nicked. We're gonna stay clear of people for the rest of the day.

A couple of days ago we walked a 6 hour section of the Queen Charlotte Track which was awesome - we got some great shots. Deirdre now has two of the biggest blisters you've ever seen, but she did enjoy herself (even if she did have to ditch her new hiking boots for the more comfortable option of Tevas
over her socks). It was the two hour steep climb at the start that was the worst bit. We made it with 15 minutes to spare before the boat picked us up to bring us back to Picton.

One afternoon was taken up with touring the Marlborough vineyards, sampling a few vintages, sampling a few more, well that was pretty much it. There's a distillery in Blenhim that makes Sambuca & Schnapps, and we'll visit there on the way back after making arrangements to camp on their front lawn! We also stoped in at Havelock to try a few green shell Mussels (shown half eaten),

Apart from that, 3 weddings (ok, 2 & a blessing), lazing in front of the box watching the America's cup, barbies & booze, we did manage to get up the far north for a few days. Did the Cape Reinga tour from Kaitaia, stayed in Mangonui (really nice), then down through KeriKeri to the mouth of the Hokianga (caught no fish!), did some walks in the Waipoua forest to see some big Kauri trees, then a couple of hours at the Kaiiwi lakes before heading back to Auckland.

Dad's got a wall for us to knock down whilst we're here in NZ, & we did a bit of preparation work for it. Can't wait to smash the sucker to pieces when we get back. Damn, another couple of weeks to wait, but today we're off to the Abel Tasman national park which is supposed to be beautiful, with great beaches. It's 25 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, so I guess I can cope.

Cheers, Rik