We last left you in the internet cafe on a rainy Saturday in Hamilton, after leaving our phone number at the Champions office for spare tickets and preparing ourselves to ask anybody and everybody for All Blacks vs South Africa tri-nations tickets. Fortunately the hard work paid off! After a few near misses (one guys children had entered a competition across the road to win tickets for the game and we were promised the tickets should they have won!), we made our way to the ground a couple of hours beforehand to soak up the atmosphere and give us a chance of scoring tickets.
Just as hope was fading half an hour before kick off, and the beers wearing off, someone looked down from us from above and gifted us with two covered seats for $50 a pop! So not only did we get tickets, but we got discounted $85 tickets! Full of beans and rather excited, the celebrations started with Steinlagers and hotdogs!
A happy Fran with a pair of All Blacks vs Boks tickets!
The game was ultimately pretty poor for the All Blacks, but great to be in a sell out crowd surrounded by a passionate mix of All Blacks and Boks fans – and an awesome end to the game. The rest of the evening was a little blurry but Hamilton certainly won’t forget that night in a hurry! Five hours later we were stumbling home at 3am weilding Burgerfuel.
Hamilton Waikato stadium
Not content with the pain of a hangover, we booked ourselves into what we thought was going to be a nice tranquil visit to some glow-worm caves at Waitomo the following day. What we got was a full 2hr caving / potholing / tubing adventure in amazing underground limestone caves which are home to thousands of luminescent glow-worms – seeing these creatures in the pitch black of the caves whilst sitting in a rubber tube in freezing water is an experience that is difficult to portray in words!
"Black water rafting" (Not our photo!)
Following the week of adrenalin we were pretty exhausted and so headed north of Auckland to the beaches for the last few days of our trip. We stayed for three days at a great little place called Sandspit in the Matakana region and enjoyed horse riding, kayaking, windsurfing, fishing and a lot of relaxing in the sun! Oh, and a good snapper fish and chips at Snell’s beach.
Goat island marine reserve
Sunset from Sandspit wharf
Relaxing in the sun
Sadly, after our three days in the sun we had to say goodbye to our Babylon 5 spaceship. Home to us for 40 days and 40 nights we returned after 5676km of spacetravel after staying in the car for 39 of the 40 nights and thoroughly enjoed our time. What a fantastic experience.
Returning to Auckland we paid a visit to our earlier hosts – Niel and Catherine, and had a boozy tour of a few Ponsonby bars after a day of chores. Today has been rather painful as a result, but really excited about Australia tomorrow!!! Bring it on!
