It appears that I have left it a while between entries so there is a fair amount of catching up to be done in this one.

I shall begin at the beginning (or from the last point at which I updated you). I had to get up early once again and leave Auckland, again, on another stray bus, this time taking me South to a town called Hahei. I believe that we may have done a number of things on the journey as that is the stray way, but these events currently elude my memory. We stayed in a kind of lodge at a campsite that night that was cosy to say the least! We did however head, en masse down to the volunteer fire station to watch a rugby final between Wellington and Waikato (Waikato is the region south of Auckland so obviously that is who we supported for fear of being beaten to death otherwise!). It was an amazing atmosphere especially as Waikato won.

We left Hahei at 8am and I decided to stay on the bus as there seemed to be very little else to do. From there we headed on to Raglan where we stayed at a surf school in the mountains. How can you surf in the mountains? I hear you cry. The answer is that you take a bus down to the beach with a surf board, thus surfing can happen. the beach there was apparently exciting for surfers as it has a point break. For you non-surfers out there (so everyone reading this) a point break is when the waves break sideways to  the beach so if you catch a wave right, you can surf it for about 1km, apparently. Another thrilling aspect of this surf school is that it has a sports barn and a flying fox in the bush. Now wildlife lovers, do not get over-excited, a flying fox is not a new and wondrous breed of airborne mammal, it is in fact a really long zip wire that is hilarious to ride in the pitch dark. Trust me.

The sports barn although it sounds like a high class sporting complex was in fact a corrugated iron barn equipped with the basic apparatus of a 70's comprehensive. Nonetheless, I engaged in a, slightly improvised, game of basketball with three other strays (riders of the stray bus) and at one point, during a particularly spirited leap in the air, kicked a german in the nuts. Needless to say, I found this extremely entertaining whilst he did not.

After Raglan we were transported here to Rotorua where I remain until lunchtime tomorrow when I'll head to Taupo, home of the cheap skydive, watch this space.

That is all of interest for now apart from 24 hours of food poisoning and the subsequent few days of gradual recovery.

Keep me up to date on the day to day goings on of normal life, lest I become too used to this bizarre world that is travelling.

Lots of love

Kate

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