New Zealand is more like England than we thought. It has rained and rained and rained for two days solid now. We've left Auckland and headed north and are now in The Bay of Islands in a lovely little place called Paihia. From here we were hoping to dive the wreck of The Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's flagship which was bombed and sunk by the French in 1985...but...the weather's so bad the dive company here has taken it's boat out of operation for a week and a half meaning we can't get to it. To be honest the bay looks as cloudy as hell anyway so maybe it's not too bad a thing. The trip up was fairly uneventful, we stopped of for a lovely breakfast at a cafe on the side of a hill where the winds were so strong I thought the van might blow over...needless to say they didn't, and a full English (or full New Zealand?) later we were off...

The scenery itself is reminiscent of any national park in the UK. Perhaps most like the Lake District at the present time, as there are lakes at the sie of just about every road. The only disconcerting thing about these lakes are the treetops that are just visable above the (rising) water...

We're hoping to see the famous 'hole in the rock' tomorrow which is...a hole in a rock. The water was so high today that the hole was not visible...Friday to Sunday is the Whangarei craft fair so I'm letting Jen drag me along (shoul give me some chance of getting to a rugby match or two...) before we head back down. It's looking pretty unlikely that we can do any diving but we're half thinking (well less than half really, more like eighth thinking) about pushing our flight to Chile back a week to enable us to get back up north in October - when the conditions are better...