It's a strange thing about travelling light - it plugs straight into my acquisitive streak. We cycled to Kerikeri today to see the meeting house where the Waitangi agreement was signed. A 46 km round trip. Seems it is actually in Paihia, about 500m from the backpacker hostel we are staying in. We'd passed it the night before on our way to finding supper and thought it looked interesting. Still, we did have a nice ride and popped into several kauri wood workshops...

Well so far so good. One of the advantages of seriously dreading such a long flight is that it can't be as bad as imagined. And it wasn't. I worked out an arrangement with 2 blankets and a neck pillow which was nearly comfortable and enjoyed the fairly constant supply of Jasmine tea. I was a bit institutionalised after 24 hours and was quite sad to leave seat 63H - my new home. By the time we did deplane we'd become cigarette mules for a fellow traveller Paul, wh...