Auckland

We arrived in Auckland to stay in Base hostel. It's a really generic hostel which is really hard to meet people in. Also our room was the smallest room you could fit two bunk beds in and the window just looked out onto the hall. That was kinda weird. So we hung around there for a while quickly realising that people didn't really seem to want to chat in the common area. There was free pizza in the bar and cheap drinks so we went down to that. We chatted with a few people but the bar was pretty quite and we had decided to go to the cinema. We went to see I Am Number 4. It was a cross between Roswell and Smallville. I thought it would have made a better tv series than a film but Brian really like it and is looking forward to the next one. He avidly believes girl in it serves no purpose whatsoever.

Next day we went to the Kelly Tarlton's Antartic Encounter. We wandered around and saw lots of sharks in different really big tanks and got to ride on a snow car thing around the penguin enclosure. They had these massive sting rays there. The oldest was massively long and weighed as much as three grown men. They seemed quite nice as the just seemed to lie on the person feeding them. After we had seen all the tanks and enclosures we got to put on wet suits and snorkels. Then we headed into the staff area and got into a cage (it had a perspex bottom and net sides with floats all along the top) in the shark tank. Then we got to snorkel around the tank and get quite close to a few of the sharks. It was really cool and the tank was really big. You could also scuba dive with the sharks but you need to be a qualified scuba diver and myself and Brian aren't. It was a really great thing to do and I would total recommend it. I'd say if you could scuba dive that would be even better but the snorkeling was cool too. Next day we chilled out for the day and headed out in Auckland that night. We got dinner in O'Hagans and then headed to the ice bar which was good fun. We got a few pictures and had a few drinks until my fingers were sore from the cold. Then we went out in a few different bars around the quay/viaduct area. It was a Saturday night and loads of people were out and there was good dancing. The following day we were considerably hung over. Brian didn't really leave the sofa and I was about the same other than going to the supermarket to get breakfast and dinner (I'm usually really hungry when I'm hungover). Had been doing quite well up to now cause my hangovers were usually better than Brian's but I was way worse this time. And that was the end of our trip to New Zealand. We'll definitely miss it here cause we were kept so busy the whole time.