Well hello there to all..hope ye're all well! Thanks to all of you who have texted or mailed on your numbers..I was feeling a bit pathetic with only 2 numbers in my contact list there for a few days!!

So all is going well now after the fecking crap that was Gisborne, to be fair the people at the hotel were lovely but thats the only nice thing Im saying about the place!!! Ever!!!

So Napier was a nice town, it had quite a cool vibe about it, bit of a pity we hit it early on in the week as it was fairly quiet but we did as was expected and drank our body weight in wine as usual..some habits are hard to kill off!! We did another wine tour, which I must admit to have been a bit wary of after the last cruise, but much to Doug's disgust it seemed to be a tour focused on teaching you about wines and history of the region and stuff rather than getting you roaringly drunk like the last one..so thankfully no air freshners appeared in the room in the middle of the night this time..thank god!!

We didnt do much else in Napier that I can remember, chilled out a lot, was good to have accomodation that you could actually sit in for a night rather than jumping off the bed the minute you wake up for fear of what might find you tastier than the sleeping bag!!

Taupo is where we are at the mo and again its a really nice town, seems to be a place for people to stop off for a night or two before they move on if you know what I mean..but nonetherless we've had a good few days here, we went out on a wee cruise yesterday to see some rock carvings..and when I say wee I mean absolutely tiny boat thing, the captain guy was cramming the feckers on, was sure we were going to go under..helped hugely by the captain joking about it!!! As part of the cruise we did get to swim in the Lake (Lake Taupo - the largest lake in NZ as Douglas KEEPs telling me!!) but they only told us it was another of these lakes feed by snow and cold stuff all the time, AFTER Id jumped in..it was freeeeeeezing!!! but done now, the lady beside me said at least its another tick off your list, told her its time that list was thrown away!!

So on next to a week in National Park, oh it will be wondrous to have a whole week of not moving somewhere every few days..although am getting quite concious we're on the homeward run of the holiday and its not sitting with me too well..we're organising our cook islands accomodation at the mo, fabulous as it all looks it'll be fairly sad cos when we get there then that means its only 1.5 weeks and we're back in freezing cold, wet edinburgh with nothing but work to fill the day..like you guys!!!

love to all..xx