We celebtrated our last night in Rotorua with that staple Kiwi fare - curry. Fantastic it was too. At long last we've found one Jen enjoyed and wuill have again - a lamb nowabi whatever that contained. On checking out and driving a bit we found our leatherman to be absent (this is no.2) and to cut a long story short the hotel deny one of their people has nicked it despite us not having it and it never having left the room. Eventually they offered us 200 dollars to buy a new one which we are pleased with.

From Rotorua we headed north to Tauranga (pronounced, in the usually weird Kiwi way, Tower-onga, not tour-anga as you would expect...) to get Jen's teeth fixed by the son of her boss' ex-biology teacher. He was great and clearly undercharged us too. Hats off to Mr Gareth Gregg BDS, I know this is a long shot but if you ever need a dentist at short notice in the north island he's your man...

We had some time to burn before the dental appointment so managed to visit Mount Manganui which, after the oil refineries en route, turned out to be a really pleasant little beach resorrt. The mount obviosuly dominates the skyline but the area is not too touristy and we spent a nice hour or so sipping coffee and people watching...

After deciding we couldn't really justify or afford a trip to White Island (NZ's most active volcano) (having recently been to Rangitoto $135 each seemed alot of cash) we decided to miss it out and head around the Eastern Cape. We stopped overnight at a small place called Te Kaha and caught the most fantastic sunset - all purples, reds and oranges - on our own little private beach. It was worth the stay in the middle of nowhere.

Our plan for today was to head out to the Eastern Cape lighthouse (600 steps up - it's located on the top of a cliff....never of guessed huh?) after stopping at Te Araroa Pohutukawa which is a massive tree basically. Only 2 problems we found with these plans...
1) The 20 km gravel road to the cape was so bad we only managed 1 km before having to turn back)
2) We couldn't find the bloody tree, perhaps, judging by the number of timber-trucks we passed it's now a canoe, woodchips or MDF.

Hence we sped on - through Gisborne, where Cook first landed (on the mainland) and Dame Kiri Te Kanewa was born, and onto Napier where we now reside. The trip between Gisborne and Napier wasn't without incident though. Our van is utterly pathetic at climbing hills, however this probably saved us a nasty incident this afternoon. We were climbing on of the many hundred hills at about 50 km/h behind a car with a boat on a trailer. Suddenly the boat slipped it's (obviously rather weak) morrings and slid off the back of the trtailer and skidded to a halt in the middle of the road. Fortunately the car brakes better than it accelerates and we can to a halt about a metre or so behind the boat. Can you imagine that on the insurance claim form 'hit boat...200 metres up a hill...' Anyhow we got out, helped the bloke get his boat back on his trrailer, secured it a little tighter and with frayed nerves headed onwards.

Napier was destoyed by an earthquake in 1931 and was rebuilt from nothing. It is meant to be the finest example of an art-deco city anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of Miami...but after meeting 'Jim from Florida' the other night I would suggest the people may be a little easier to get on with here. we plan on having a full day wandering and photographing tomorrow before leaving on Sunday.

One very weird thing we have found in NZ is their love of throwing things up in the air and making them land (and stay) on electrical wires. So far we have seen a large demestos bottle, a pair of shoes, and the best of all today - a tea cup repleat with saucer. Why - no idea? The kiwis are also obsessive about the weather - you can't have a break between records on the local redio without the presenter commenting on the showers, or even getting people to phone up to comment about them...all very amusing and very reminiscent of the UK.