Due to a huge group of Christians/Annoying teenagers that have booked out every single bed in the hostel, we had to move hostels this morning to the less appealing options, The Fat Camel. This becomes a slight nightmare at times as checkout is 10 am and check in is 2pm, so we have to leave our backpacks in a unmonitored store room that is open to any man and his dog to wonder in. But seen as we had signed up to the 10 km walk up Mt Eden this was our only option.

Mt Eden is one of the 50 plus dormant volcanoes that the city of Auckland is built on. Seen as we were the only people willing to risk the potential downpour and do the walk, a personal guided tour by Nina (German but not the singer of 99 red balloons) was on the agenda. After 2 hours and a smattering of rain we made it back to the city just as the heavens unleashed. Luckily at this point we were passing the free admission of Toi Toi art gallery. Now those of you who think we are becoming museum/gallery fanatics are wrong. We took refuge there till the rain died down to take advantage of the comfy common areas with free wifi. While we were sat there we wrote a list a journey legs for our trip so far, an idea we stole from Hes and Emma. This will enable us to calculate how much mileage we will have racked up over the year by bus, car, boat, train and plane. The overall feeling of today is one that we are familiar with - get us out of here! We have found this to be common within the last few days of being in a country as it is almost like you are waiting to leave. A feeling such as this is only enhance by the mundane, dreary vibe of a city like Auckland.

After both of us feeling a bit deflated today, we decided to go for a few cheap drinks to end our NZ stint. We did not know what the night had in store for us....

We met an Earl/Catholic Father from England, who's name we daren't mention. We met over a game of killer pool when he asked the question - how do you know this game? Is it an indication of a miss spent youth? The facts we found out....
- He was a Catholic Priest.
- Father is no longer Father as he has come out as homosexual recently.
- He wasn't able to tell his family, the Bishop got in there first.
- He is also trained as a doctor.
- He was doctor to The Pope.
- He drives an Aston Martin.
- He lives in an £800,000 2 bed flat.
- His family estate is something like 78,000 acres (and that has been down sized)
- We were shown a photo of the family home - basically a castle which looked bigger than Temple Newsam House.
- He has written many medical thesis that have been widely published in Asia so the Thai Government have asked him to go over and train them.
- He is part of the House of Lords.
- Close friends include a lot of royalty.
- They have many estates around Europe.
- We got gossip of family members who are leading very strange lives.
- Himself and his siblings were brought up to marry into wealthy families.
- He is one of the boys from Eton.

He explained his upbringing to us and this did not even make us jealous. It sounds awful. The whole conversation was about money and wealth. We nearly asked; are u actually happy? This 39 year old man was so sheltered it was untrue, even with his Fathers credit card in his pocket. We felt as though we were educating him as he asked simple questions about life. A particular high point of the conversation for us was when he discussed his non existent sex life with us, claiming he is the oldest virgin and he has now claimed that he is gay. Our response to him explaining that he found it hard to meet people and wasn't sure how to was "Why don't you try Grinder!" (A homosexual dating app). When Matt explained that his dad was of Indian decent, he was so shocked and thought a book should be written about him. (So Shez get on it, we could make some money!!) We laughed at saying this to just about royalty for hours! On leaving, we were given his email address and told to contact him if we are ever in London. We did think we might get a drink out of this though. This conversation really showed how life is not about money! We love our lives and thank our families for not being part of Royalty.

M & C xxxx