We got up quite early again (getting used to early mornings and early nights!), showered, and headed back into Auckland. Today we'd decided to follow a walking tour that was in our NZ guide book, so we parked up in the city centre, near the start of the route. After stopping for a coffee we found a second hand book shop so bought a book each (I think we'll be getting through a lot of books if we read for a few hours every night when it gets dark!). The next thin...

Today we woke up early (7am!), showered, and then it was time to phone / text home to deliver the big news! We used the payphone on site and Dave phoned home while I text my mam and dad, Dawn, Lee, Amanda, Emma and Chris! Straight away the congratulatory texts started arriving and the Parsons' all sounded pleased on the phone! We ate our breakast, standing next to the van then packed up and headed into Auckland. We'd read about a road in Parnell that has free wi...

Today our alarm went off at 5:30am - as usual, we woke up 10 minutes before! Our first problem of the day was getting out of the hostel - noone was on the desk, front door was locked and alarmed, taxi driver wating outside looking in at us looking at him! Eventually he gestured to Laura to answer the phone on the desk, he rang it and told her to go upstairs and wake up the owner to let us out! The owner didn't seem to mind and was actually quite apologetic about ...