Adventures: New Zealand part 3 (in a nutshell!)

It seems crazy to think that it is only 3 weeks since we were in Nelson, a really pretty town on the northern coast of New Zealand's South Island. We were staying with Andrew's friend Eva, who I had heard lots about but never met as she left London shortly before I met Andrew. It was lovely to get to know her a bit, and hopefully she will take us up on our offer to visit Melbourne at some point in the next few months.

On Saturday morning we had a great time wandering round Nelson's lovely market - despite being frustrated that we couldn't carry more of the delicious food into Australia with us! - before heading out to the countryside. We stopped at a few wineries and then on to the beautiful coast. We then spent a really good evening with some of Eva's friends, and when we got up on Sunday it was time to go again. Much like our trip to see Em & Rod it felt like was time to leave almost as soon as we had arrived, but it was great to be there. We took the short flight across to Wellington on Sunday and spent a very lazy rest of day there before flying north to Hamilton on Monday.

This is where Mark, a friend from home who used to work with my brother, now lives. Again it was great to catch up and he seems really happy with his new life in NZ. He's only been there since August but I think the wide availabilty of adventure sports has helped him to settle there! Luckily for me Mark was working so he didn't have the chance to make us do anything scary; instead we had dinner in an excellent restaurant, and were made to feel really welcome by his housemates who loaned us their airbed for the night. Then it was a bright and early start on Tuesday for the bargain ($11 for us both!) 2 hour bus trip back to Auckland so that we could catch our afternoon flight to Melbourne.