Sunday 27th April 2008 and we all finally arrived in NZ. James after a monster, marathon of a flight and the other lads after a pants scary, turbulent, lightning filled flight. Safely down and a few customs checks there was a big meet and greet at the hostel. Readily acquainted it was off to break our no fast food NZ pact by strolling straight into the Arches. Lasted about 8 seconds! After a couple of hours catch up it was off to bed for steady nights sleep! It had been a while for all of us!

Monday morning it was up early. For all the stories about how cold NZ is we were out in shorts and T's as it was bloody roasting! A look around town and it was time to sort out our Kiwi Experience. The Devon boys arrived and after another meet and great we got ourselves signed up for the top dog route. Credit cards still on fire Luke and Chris headed to the doctors to get themselves some Malaria tablets. Why can't it be that easy in England??? Simple. We booked ourselves off to get out of Christchurch the next day so after some shopping it was back to Base to make sure we were sorted. We headed out that evening for an Indian (I swear we're back-packing) and then it was time for another go at our specialist activity - the pub quiz! As we were now a new group of 6 that would last for NZ the Wet Bandits team name had to go. In it's place was none other than the Sticky Bandits for all the Home Alone 2 fans! Thinking we had a chance we then proceeded to sit through 10 rounds of mind numbing, stupidly hard questions based a lot around local knowledge. To say we had dropped a clanger would be an understatement. To top it off the quiz master 'Dave' had to be the biggest w***er kicking around in NZ. Smashing. Every cloud has a silver lining though, and after our rock bottom 34 point based finish (out of 130) we one the booby prize of a round of beers. Middle fingers to the other contestants much! A different night and it was time for bed. 07:30 start!