The weather forecast was rather glum for today - rain and high winds. Despite that your intrepid travellers rose reasonably early and went down to the jetty and booked the Dolphin Cruise. We set off in a large catamaran in pouring rain and low visibility. After a somewhat interesting high speed ride the skipper announced that dolphins had been spotted about 10 minutes away so off we set at high speed once again. There they were, a pod of dolphins playing around a...

We arrived at Auckland airport (and froze!) Found the free hotel phone and called the Sudima Hotel for them to pick us up - our car hire company Go closes at 5.30pm and so arranges for this hotel to do the honours - despite misgivings this worked perfectly and we started north. After a struggle with Sallie's Navman I at last got the hang of it and found the A1North. We stopped for dinner at a service station as the motel had warned us that just about everywhere p...