Despite my best intentions, it would seem that the blog isn’t living up to the (quite frankly unrealistic) demands of my many followers. The following e-mail gives a typical example of the feedback I have been receiving. To conceal the identity of the sender, we shall simply refer to him as Mr A Karr:
I've still been following your blog but there's not very much to follow most days (or weeks, months etc.)!
I truly I feel that I have let you, my loyal readers, down. Needless to say I’m going to buck up act (although previous experience would suggest this is likely to come to fruition). Anyway……
I have been busy enjoying my last chunk of time in the land of the long white cloud. I’m still based in Auckland, but I have managed to squeeze a few cheeky wee adventures here and there. I finally made it out to the Bay of Plenty (BOP), which was all very enjoyable. To be honest though, the true highlight of the trip was a visit to Kiwi 360. Now I do like a kiwi fruit from time to time, but to see the vast investment the BOP have put into this facility was truly jaw dropping. Kiwi 360 is a museum/working farm/unique insight into New Zealand’s great Kiwi Fruit industry. The best bit is the giant Kiwi Fruit that sits outside. You can even climb up inside it! I did…it was very exciting.
New Zealand has a bit of a thing about giving towns a ‘theme’ of sorts. Huntly has a very ugly power station - the theme for Huntly is therefore ‘Switch on to Huntly’. There is a town where all the shops are fashioned out of corrugated steel. This doesn’t sound very interesting, but have a look at the website
http://www.corrugatedcreations.co.nz/
Not content with a giant Kiwi Fruit and novelty steel themed towns, I decided to push the envelope and go to Paeroa. L&P (Lemon and Paeroa) is NZ’s national soft drink. The beverage was created in the lovely town of Paeroa….I say lovely, it is quite the shithole. That said, they do have another giant object worth a visit – the big L&P bottle. It is truly enormous and one of the highlights of my tour so far (sorry the sarcasm checker wasn’t working in Word). Check out my Flikr pics but clicking on the gallery above for more giant soft drink action.
One particular lowlight of the past couple of weeks has been the change in weather. I seem to have lost all perspective on what ‘cold’ really means. It is about 13 degrees in the evening and my teeth are chattering. Yes, winter is coming and so there is only one course of action available….go to the south island for a few weeks to experience even colder weather! I will be leaving Auckland on the 17th of May and heading off on a 6 week road trip taking me round all the bits I haven’t seen yet, and some I have, finishing off in Christchurch ready for my flight to Cairns (where it will be substantially warmer) on the 30th of June. After that….who knows!
Can I say a special thanks to Lorna T and Gillian for coming to visit me this week. It was so good to see you….and watch in great amusement as my Kiwi flatmate tried to decipher what you were saying. I’ve had more visitors here than when I lived in Inverness (totally understandable). Anyways, I’m off the purchase a warm jacket….chow for now xx
