Hello from napier, the Art Deco capital of the world - a quick lesson for you all - it was levelled by a massive easthquake in the 30's and rebuilt all in an Art Deco style, and to be fair is quite cool.

We arrived here from Welly yesterday afternon after an arduous 5 hour journey (which Sarah decided to sleep though) to be greeted by about 30 mins of sun, followed by dark grey clouds! We were meant to have left Welly at 8am, and set our alarm to get out by then as the car was in an overnight carpark paid until 8am. However, as our alarm is set on UK time, we got a bit confused, and instead of going off at 7 am it went off at - cue frantic sprint (still asleep) to the carpark, with no city map to find out how to get to the hostel in a labyrinthine network of one ways, but all went well. i managed to fluke it straight to the hostel and even find a parking space.

The day before we spent in the city itself. We went to fetch our new little car for 11am, which turned out to be quick and easy, with the only complications being us ariving nice and early, about an hour before, then realising we had forgotten our contracts. So we had to srint all the way back to the hostel, thenback to the car place - but we ended up bumping into 2 guys, Micah and Zoe, from our Africa tour who we were arranging to meet a bit later on. We ended up eing about 5 mins late but they didnt mind, we just signed the form and jumped into Mo, our Toyota Corsa (dont quite get that, surely some copyright issues there??). We had nowhere to park her, so just decided to stick her in a nice and safe overnight park.

We then popped to the Te Papa museum, NZ's national museum which is absolutely MASSIVE!!! It is 6 floors high and totally packed with stuff! We spent a good few hrs in there (getting less than half way around) before receiving a complete information overload. We then grabbed some lunch and went for a walk around the harbour before meeting up again with Micah and Zoe. They were both looking for a flat and jobs here, so they knew the place really well and took us on a drive out to the beaches (including scorching bay, the place all of the LOTR guys lived when they were filming!) for fish and chips, followed by a Monteiths Summer Ale!!! We really are getting through the beer here!! It was a really nice evening and good to catch up with the guys.

Yesterday on arriving in Napier, we had arranged to meet Rob and Michelle, 2 friends from Swansea that have moved out here to live (well Michelle is from NZ) and funnily enough Rob is from just down the road from Sarah, in Paignton. They came and picked us up after work, and took us on a mini tour of Napier, including mount Te Mata, which gave really good views of the area, the only pity was it was all grey. Next we went food hunting and ended up in this weird pizza chain calles 'hot as hell'. It was decked out with devils and stuff, and all the pizzas had weird names like double trouble, mordor, gluttony and odd stuff like that, although they were really tasty in all fairness.

Next stop was a lovely little bar just over a tiny road from one of the harbours, and they served some more good ales, so we got our tastebuds going again over a long chat! Again it was a really good night, and nice to receive some tips from the locals. They have told us the best few wineries here, so we are going to pop put to them later today (Napier is in one of NZ's most famous wine regions - Hawkes bay - prob heard of it at home!). We are also planning to meet Rob and Michelle again tonight for a couple more beers!!!

All for now - next stop Taupo and the skydive!!!!