(As this is a long blog you might find at the end of a paragraph a sentence just ends, just click on it and the rest will appear)

We sold the Spartacus! Woo hoo! $1200 richer . Not bad, considering we payed $700 for the old motor. We loved & hated the car, but it took us 8300km around n.z....so, farewell.

Well we have had a brill time over here, only 2 more days left in Auckland before we fly to the Cook Islands on the 9th.

After leaving Wanaka, where we accomplished puzzle world, we travelled up to the tiny village of Fox Glacier, as we had booked a Glacier Walk the previous day. We couldnt wait to get on the ice, the next morning we were set for our full day trek. We were given leather walking boots, crampons and alpine walking poles. We were in a small group of 12 and everyone had turned up looking like they were about to tackle Everest, 3-4 layers of thermal kit. It was sunny, about 20 degrees so by the time we walked 30m track to get to the ice I was down to shorts and t-shirt. We spent 4 1/2 hours walking on the glaciers and as you can see by the photos it was simply amazing. When we returned from our trek, we headed off to the next Glacier village, Franz Josef. We booked into a nice little cabin as we had slept in the car the previous 2 nights. We ended up in the pub near by where it tunred into a great night of Bingo & Beer. There were some good prizes to be won on the bingo, there was a possibility of getting butt naked to win some of them. Amy was all to happy to send me into the pack to compete for the prizes. But she joined me after a little too much wine. We had met a couple from Essex that night, who had just started out on their travels so we spent the night with them, each spurring each other on to go the distnace to win the prizes, such as bungee jumps. We didnt win so our clothes stayed on bar a couple of flip flops.

We travelled up the North West Coast making our way back, we were leaving the South Island in a couple of days. We stayed 1 night in Greymouth, not much too do there but we were having problems again with the car, and needed it to be looked at. We found out there were a couple of big problems but they couldnt fix it as they didnt have the parts..oh well. We carried on the next morning heading for Nelson. It was a sat when we got into Nelson, and early Sun morning the Wales v N.Z game was on. We didnt have Sky in our caravan park so I got up very early sun morning and ended up sneaking into another posh caravan park to watch it...it was worth it even though Wales lost.

We got the ferry back to the North Island, arriving in Wellington. We desperately tried to find somewhere to sleep, nothing. You could tell that we had just entered peak season in n.z, the prices had gone up by a lot. We had to stay on the outskirts in a Holiday park, but we had seen plenty of Wellington previously so it wasnt too bad. By now the car sounded like a tank, constantly cranking. We needed to head to a major town/city so we could have the car looked at again. Our original plan was to head to the East Coast, but to save on petrol money, we travelled to Palmerston North, the place where we had previously been to the Rugby Museum. We spent a couple of days there, the car was in another garage. Within an hour we had a call from the Garage....very bad news. The car needed a lot of work, about $600 -$700 worth. The manager there was a really nice woman, and she knew straight away that we couldnt afford it, plus the work was worth more than the car...ha. Her advice...."get what you can for it, or leave it somewhere". So this was a big downer for us as we were going to use the sale of the car to pay for our Cook Islands accommodation...damn!

We went and spent 2 nights in Rotorau in the Bay of Plenty region. Its known for its geothermal activity and there were volcanic pools and hot mud pools dotted around the town. Up to this point we still hadnt had any real Maori experiences apart from seeing artifacts in museums, so Amy went and booked us a Maori Village Experince tour. We were picked up on a coach, which was full of people from around the world. The driver was part of the Maori Experience and explained to us about traditions, the village we were attending etc. One of the things she required from us was a 'Chief'. Someone on the bus (our tribe) had to be Chief, who would confront the Maori Warriors from the village. Thanks to a local man on the bus and Amy's sneaky finger pointing at me I was chosen to be the Chief of our tribe...thanks a lot. I thought it was going to an embarrasing nightmare, but it turned out to be a good laugh and an enjoyable experience. Being chief I went through various things from being confronted by massive Maori's screaming in my face, being chosen to accept the token of Peace, doing the Haka and leading my tribe. It was fantastic to watch the performances of the Maori men and women. The song & danes they did was really entertaining. We had a tradiotional meal, more performances and lots more of Maori activities. I was presented with a gift from the Village as a thanks for being Chief, a wood carving that symbolises pretection. When we got on the coach to leave i though ,my time as Chief had come to an end...oh no. I had to stand at the front and get every person representing a different country to sing a song. We had german, Ukranians, Belgiums, Irish, Aussies etc. So I got them to sing a song but i wasnt ready when when I had to sing a song. The 1st thing that came into my head was a Welsg song I used to sing when I was younger .....and when Im really drunk. Hmm.

When we had 1st arrived in the South Islands we met a bloke in the pub when watching the rugby...he ended up inviting us to visit him if we were ever in his area. He lived in a place called Wangamate, the east coast of the Coromandel Penisula. We gave him a call when we were in Mt Manganui and straight away he was happy for us to come and stay with him. We stayed 2 days in Mt Manganui, a little bit of surfing and sun bathing as the weather was so good. We also watched England get humilated by New Zealand which was nice for me . The couple we went to stay with were called Allan & Robin. It was really nice of them to have us for 2 days. Such nice people, retired dairy farmers, and were they lived was almost perfect. The beaches we nicer than that of Thailand. Allan owned his own boat and was kind enough to take us out on it for a day of fishing and visiting the islands around. It was a great day, we both caught some big Kahawai, unfortunatly Amy caught a bigger fish than me, so I tried my hardest all day...but without success. Amy spent a bit of time laying down in the deck below as she was feeling sea sick. The 2 days with Allan & Robin was a nice change of pace for us, i think we slept the best we had in ages. Allan had smoked 1 of the Kahawai's we caught and have it to us when we left them, it was a nice lunch we had that day. We will keep in contact with them and have exchanged emails. Since leaving them we hadnt done too much, we spent a some time just north of Auckland City. We arrived in the City on Friday and took the car to the backpackers car market early sat morning.

This Backpackers Car market is a bloomin rip off, but you dont really have any other option to sell your car in such a short amount of time. You pay $60 to leave your car in a car park spot and people just turn up and have a look about. The car market to nothing to help sell the car so you have to sit there and hope people turn up and take an interest in your car. A couple of people payed for our car to have a full mechanical check, $140 each time. It not worth it as if you find out the car has a few issues they dont buy the car and they are out of pocket. Some people ( especially the yanks) were expecting the cars to be in tip top form. All of the cars were so over priced, the cheapest there was $2400, so i put ours on for $1200. I took some people for a test drive in it, the car was cranking a little, but it had died down a little? But in the end a lad took a gamble with it, no mechanical check and told me last night he would buy it... This morning we had an anxious wait to see if he would turn up ....he did and we sold old Spartacus. We are very very happy. After all the issues we had with the car it was very stressful to think that you wouldnt see any return. So we are 2 very cheerful people.

New Zealand is a must for everyone to visit!! Simply FANTASTIC.But all good things come to end, and I am sure we will get over the sadness of leaving as we have 2 1/2 weeks in the Cook Islands . Well I think it will be a few weeks till our next Blog, probably when we get to Canada in Jan. Cheers guys for reading our N.Z stories. We will try and get keep in contact in the Cook Islands?

Kia Ora readers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

R.I.P Sparty old friend