alrighty then?

well its been a mad week and a half, we've done so much its hard to know where to begin.
before we left sydney went to look at the opera house. were supposed to be goin on a tour but they were all booked out so went to the opera instead. we were all kind of knackered so thought we might get a sly forty winks inside, however we were all totally blown away by it. was absolutely the best thing we did in sydney. fab.
so we said goodbye to babs and headed onto auckland, where we met up with the lads who looked after us in style by bringing us on yet another session to yet another irish pub!! oh well sure why break the trend at this stage. headed to a beach the next day. even though its autumn here the weather's still lovely, mainly sunny and cloudy. were in swimming , ( waves were great paddy and stephen!! loads of surfers around!) rented out two cars then last sunday and headed 'down the country' for the week. was absolutely brill. went to a place called rotorua first. got to go zorbing, which is basically rolling down a hill inside a big inflatable ball. really good fun. then went racing on the 'luge'. they give you these little carts and you race down three different tracks as fast as you can. davy couldnt even stay on the track he was going so fast. next day went to the thermal wonderland, saw a load of geysers and mud pools full of boiling mud. it all looked a bit surreal , like what you'd imagine the moon to be like. on then to a little place called okehanu. the next day headed out for an 8 hour hike up the famous tongariro crossing. organised by davy and supposed to be the most famous hike in nz. of course he forgot to mention why its so famous which is basically because you hike around the top of a volcano crater and there are shear drops into the crater on both sides of the path and apparently loads of people freak out on this bit of it! its pretty high up so they warn you to bring some extra clothes beacause it can be cold on top, so we all through in a jacket and off we went. as the weather had been so good before than we were all more worried about the sun and running out of water than getting cold. of course it turned out to be the worst day yet. foggy and wet all day and by the time we got to the crater there was a gale force wind blowing and we'd to cling onto the rocks so we didnt get blown off. so it turned into a total endurance test and after all that we couldnt see more than 5 m in front of our noses so after climbing one of the most spectacular climbs in nz we saw absolutely nothing. bit of a laugh really though. me and jen are going to do it again in the summer now that hikiing is her new favourite hobby!! after that we were all a bit stiff and sore the next day so a good night out in wellington was well deserved . hit the irish pubs of course! spent two days in wellington bumming around and tehn headed back towards auckland. stopped off in waitomo to see the famous glowworm caves. you can do all kinds of abseiling and black water rafting into the caves but after our hiking experience we opted for a more run of the mill tour around. there are so many glow worms you dont need torches or anything. quite impressive. back then to auckland on monday. tuesday got the ferry to an island not far from auckland. rented out mountain bikes and went on one of the tracks . turned out to be yet another endurance test!! we didnt realise how hilly the island was so our 25km cycle turned out to be a bit of a hike as well! you'd have loved it eoghan. back to base then and yet another irish pub for the lads last night out. so waved goodbye yesterday to the rest of them and sitting back for a few well deserved days of detox.
when we were in the hut half way down the tongariro crossing caroline overheard some girls talking about how they were trying to get rid of their car before they left nz on thursday. so we got talking to them and went to look at the car on monday. got mick's mate ferghus to check it out for us and it seemed to be fine so went ahead and bought it , 800 dollars, which was a bit of a bargain. my first car! ( well half car, cos we bought it together). its a mazda 323 . she's got these cool pop up lights which we should get great craic out of when there' s hot boys around. we've christened her Heidi ( after tom's girlfriend, so we can get to piss tom off by calling her a flirty little bitch!! he he he! he's trying to laugh it off as best he can) anyway that's all folks .
hope i havent bored ye to death. going to throw up a few photos now as well
later
mif