Well its now been a month since Shane and I finished work in Auckland and started on our trip to the UK. I will say that we are here safely and our enjoying it (though it will be heaps better once we get into our new flat and we get the rest of our gear) but for now I will give you the fist instalment about the trip here.

Leaving Auckland and getting to Christchurch
So after finishing work on Friday 13th April we went down to the pub and we would like to thank those of you who were able to join us – it was great fun and unfortunately for those of you who couldn’t make it there are no photos!! The next few days would extremely hectic with getting everything ready for the movers who were coming in on Monday to pack the gear that we were shipping over the UK. A huge thanks to Donna and Jared for coming down to help us get sorted and to make sure that we were set to leave the country – if it wasn’t for you I don’t think we would have got through everything we had to on that day!! We officially left Auckland on Wednesday after spending a night at Jo’s – which felt just like home, as that is where a lot of our gear ended up!! (Hope the couch still looks great!!!) And yes as we were driving over the Bombays we did wave good-bye to Auckland…

Our first stop was Waitomo for the night. We stayed in the Abseil Inn (http://www.abseilinn.co.nz), which is the B&B that we stayed in the night we got engaged (nice and romantic I know). It was great just to stop and relax after the hectic days before, well I relaxed and read a book while Shane played with the car stereo that needed re-wiring. If you need accommodation in Waitomo this place comes highly recommended by us!!! After the home cooked breakfast we headed off to Taupo to spend a couple of nights with Amanda and Jamie and their two little daughters’. While there we went up to their cafe to try out the new breakfast menu – so if you are ever going through Tokaroa stop in at Aroma’s cafe for a great coffee and a bite to eat.

Next it was onto Wellington to catch up with mates there and to wait for our ferry crossing to head down to Christchurch. The drive down to Christchurch was fun; we stopped in Kaikoura to by crayfish (as this was one thing that we wanted to do before we left NZ). We want fresh crayfish, which if we had thought about this we would have realised that this meant “Live” crayfish… And we could pick our “victims” – well I couldn’t and decided to leave the room while they were being caught but came back inside in time to find Shane asking the store owner if he could kill them before packing them for the trip to Chch as the idea of live crayfish in the boot of the car kinda freaked him out… So after getting the dead crayfish packed in a box and then having to re-packing the car (which was well packed with gear) we continued on the way.

We arrived in Chch just in time for a good old fashioned kiwi bbq with the fresh crayfish with our parents…

That’s all for now as I am meant to be re-typing my CV to apply of jobs so better get back to it…
Sarah