Happy New Year

Hi there.

As I type it is now late evening here in NZ and as such you will no doubt all be either tucked up in bed awaiting the first hangover of the year or the hardcore ones may be finishing off the final hogmanay Whiskey.

We are now in Turangi which is a small town slap back in the middle of the North Island and which claims to be the trout fishing Capital of the world....I have just contributed to this reputation by sending my own giant brown trout out in to the Local water system (sorry Mum.) We did finally manage to get a car albeit our lack of foresight means we had to pay a wee bit more than if we booked it online a few weeks ago.Its not a huge deal as we are to drop it of in Rotorua on the 4th.

Wellington was superb. The city itself has quite a cosmopolitan and European feel and as with nearly all New Zealand, the scenery is fanatstic. We saw in NY with a typically Celtic session on the beers which ended up with us seeing in the bells in a cracking wee Irish bar on the Citys Cuba Street.

It is fair to say that Hogamany is not nearly as big a deal over here as it is back home and there was little build up to Midnight itself...however shortly after the bells the party really kicked off and there was plenty of handshaking, kissing and hugging of the locals to celebrate the start of 2009 not to mention having to preform numerous versions of Auld Lang Syne. Unfortunately we were not able to spend any longer in Wellington as we are heading up north to Turangua (not to be confused with Turangi) before heading onto the party on the 3rd with Mark and Majella. Am particularly looking forward to this as there is a 7s tournament taking place on the day of the party which we are going to.

Thats all for now other than once again to wish you all a very Happy New Year and an extremely prosperous 2009