So life goes on in Paihia and i am now very much a resident. Have installed myself in the staff quarters at the Mousetrap with mad brilliant Stephanie from Dublin. No more sleeping in bunk beds - YAY! We have a team meeting at 10 am to see what needs doing and go to work. This means that every day i get a marvellous lie in and have my porridge at leisure.

My job is to change the beds and straighten up the twin and double rooms that have checked out, then clean 3 kitchens, 5 showers, 5 sinks and 4 toilets - all in 2 and a half hours! Is that all? i hear you cry. Sometimes we get done in 2 hours but it's rare.

Today, being the end of Labour Day weekend (like our Spring Bank) all 7 rooms checked out and we were rushed off our feet. And Nikki and Jake are in the Hospital at Whangarei having their baby as we speak! So it was all hands on deck. The other cleaner is Tomo from Japan who i mentioned earlier. He vacs and mops the whole hostel among other things but doesn't understand me when i call him Mrs Mop. Bless.

So when i'm not doing this and when the others are free from their jobs, we go off on little road trips or walks or just sit about staring at each other invariably. Rob, Si and i did a huge drive in Ollie to Kaitaia and got scenery overkill! We went to the "Kauri Kingdom" which is an amazing workshop where they extract fossilised Kauri wood from the ground where it fell 30-50 thousand years ago. Huge one-piece items are carved from it and they are just stunning. The wood positively glows and is unlike anything i've ever seen before.

We also had Hoki and chips at the well-known chip shop at Mangonui. How truly scrumptious. Hoki is a bit like haddock but more juicy and it now takes all my will power to resist having this treat a few times a week! i have since gone off in secret and had them on the beach on my own - but the seagulls obviously love H n Cs too because they actually fly in and take the chips from your hand before you mange to get them in your mouth! It was like a scene from Hitchcock. Some tourists actually stopped and took pictures of me, with at least 40 birds swarming and squaking around my head! A tad embarrassing.

Anyway, on the big road trip Ollie wasn't too happy about things and seemed to be giving up the ghost when we were on the way home. The radio and the windscreen wipers stopped working. It is pure chance that i didn't turn off the car every time we stopped to take pictures or look at the map. The battery was totally flat and when we got home nothing worked. Good old Ollie was a star to get us home and we gave him a big kiss! The battery seems to recharge itself over night and i can take short trips but no more long ones till i get him looked at.

Last Sunday we thought a walk was in order and set off with what turned out to be a very poor map. We were ready for a 4 hour marathon but just felt like it was never going to end as we entered our sixth hour. It was an amazing walk however, a few hours through the bush, stopping every now and again to listen to the birds or look at the strange flora.

Then along an unsealed road to the little harbour of Opua where a lady from the Hague, who has run a restaurant their for 14 years with her husband from Rotherham, gave us chips. Then along the coastal path for a few more hours, taking in the never ending views of the beautiful Bay of Islands. Being the smoker of the group i suffered and was the most red faced initially. But i soon found my rhythm and was tramping like a good un by the time we got back to Paihia.

Showers and copious beers put us right and we slept like the dead. My legs were very stiff the next day but i have started a nearby hill walk a few times a week now and am starting to achieve a minor level of fitness. Would you believe that!?

As a postscript to the walk story, the next day the Rotherham restranteur drove all the way to Paihia and came and found us at our hotel to apologise that they had "cooked the chips wrong" and would we come back at our convenience and have more chips on the house. He said he would even come and pick us up if need be. Would that happen at home? i asked myself. It's the sort of thing that happens all the time in this amazing country. (i must have been REALLY bushed if i didn't notice the chips being dodgy!)