Waiheke Island - Meg

Tuesday 21st April.

I don't think I thought I'd ever make it to the airport. I just seemed to find more things I hadn't done. We all know how good I am at leaving things until the last minute, but I REALLY thought I'd been as organised as I could.

Anyway the 21st of April finally arrived and I was first in the car ready- addmitdly I had left the dificult bit of lugging the bags down stairs and putting them into the car to Phil.
So we bade farwell to Wicky Bicky and the cats, and set off for the airport. Mum and Becci arrived at the airport long before our arranged meeting time (today was a day for unheard of things, me 1st in the car and Becci being early!) They reassured us that the parking was easy and there were some nice place for lunch. Great what could go wrong? A few minutes later we had another phone call informing us that there had been and evacuation in terminal 1. My mind started woooring, OK, right, eeerrm, this will be fine, errmm....there'll be more flights to NZ tomorrow... eerrmm, well it might mean we get a night in a nice hotel, uuumm, we might even get a nice dinner thrown in, wonder if the hotel has a swimming pool, actually that sounds OK, then there was another phone call to say it was all false alarm and they'd been allowed to be back in. Phew. I didn't want to stay in a hotel anyway.
We had a lovely lunch, followed by a teary goodbye to Mum, Bec, and Phil's Ma and Pa.
Then we were finally on the plane, phhheeeewwweee.

Thursday 23rd April.
4 films, one stop in LA (in a room that made you feel like you were being held captive), lots of miniature - but nice(!) food, a distinct lack of peppermint tea, a few games of chess, a few sniffs of lavender and geranium oil, some sleep, some star gazing, more miniature food and we were there. Yes we made it to NEW ZEALAND! All the talking, planing, ebaying, car booting.... we were finally here. HOOray!

The customs people took Phil's tent (they check your walking and camping equiptment) to be checked for cleanleness, only to return it a little dissapointed at their lack of mud findings " a very clean tent sir". Phil was a happy man. It can't get any better, arrive in New Zealand AND be told you have a clean tent. Brilliant.


A bus journey and then a boat ride and we arrived on Waiheke Island. WOW dude! It is gorgeous. I can't belive I have friends who live here. We're staying with Heidi and Kirby and their daughters, Elizabeth and AnnaMaria. In their garden, it's a lovely garden too.


Heidi took us for a look around today. The bits of Waiheke we've seen are full of little wooden houses, each with it's own unusual post box at the top of the drive, big leafed plants and trees, hills. The beaches are amazing. You can definetly tell that winter's on its way though. It feels like there's a storm brewing. We've tightened the guy ropes.

We slept for nearly 14 hours last night so I think we've got the jet lag under control!
Hopefully seeing some camper vans over the weekend and then we can start our exploring... there was one for sale with big stars on, think it's got our name on it!
:-) x