Hello and Good Morning from what is a very hot and sunny Auckland! Im sitting in an internet cafe while Sez and Salt catch up on some more sleep, note that it is 7am here!

We arrived safely yesterday morning and jumped into the first taxi into town to find a hostel for the night, dropped our bags and headed straight to the heart of Auckland. What a beautiful place! The harbour is out of this world! We booked a boat ride around the harbour (see pics) which was a great way to see the city and the different surrounding harbours. The trip took us under the harbour brige where we saw people bungy jumping off it! The Queen Mary 2 is here in port at the moment, big thing for Auckland so the locals tell us. There was a big firework display celebrating it being here last night at 10pm, but I can assure you we were safely tucked in bed by then sleeping off 28 hours of jet-lag! We found the Sky Tower, hard to miss! Saw a few people doing 'Sky Falls' off it (jumping attached to a wire and free-falling) which looked fun!

We came across an amazing bar we had heard about called Minus 5, whe WHOLE bar is made out of ice! The floors, walls, seats, even the glasses you drink out of! (again, see pics!). It was great! You had to wear big warm coats and shoes and were given a free cocktail on entry so us girls 'boogied on down in the ice palace' and really enjoyed ourselves, but it was soooo cold, no I mean, really cold!!!

So we had a great but tiring first day in Auckland. The weather yesterday was really, really hot! Such a shock for me being used to UK weather, the girls have been more used to it being in South America. The next week or so looks to be the same. And guess what we're doing today at 2pm!! Our 2 birth (yes 2, gonna be a squeeze!!) Campervan is turning up and Sez and I (with Salt having not passed her test! Lucky thing!) are going to be driving it for the next 4 weeks!! Can't wait! Our first port-of-call will be the Bay of Islands up North so keep checking this blog. We've only seen pictures of it so far but it was sold to us in minuntes; DVD player, TV, microwave etc etc, please note that the etc, etc does NOT include a toilet or a shower!? So the next 4 weeks are going to be very interesting, we will keep you posted!!

Lots of love,

Sara, Sez ands Salt xxxxxxxxx