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Northlands - Day 4

Kerikeri, New Zealand

Nothing much happened today really. It was actually quite chilled out for once, not a normal thing for me when I'm on the road and on a mission to fit as much into the day as humanly possible regardless of what ungodly hour I have to get up in the morning. We left Maitai bay and stopped off at Rainbow Falls in Kerikeri for brunch before heading to Opito Bay to kill some time while we waited for my cousin, Matt, to finish work.


Rainbow Falls

Matt had arrived in Auckland a while ago and promptly pissed off up to Kerikeri to find work on account of the fact they were staying at an X Base hostel which are generally overpriced, unwelcoming and full of wankers and him and his two mates got over it and left for the work up here. There seems to be quite a bit of seasonal work up here, something I did enough of in Australia thankyouverymuch. That's not a side of backpacking I miss, working your arse off in a field for shit pay in the blazing sun. But a side of it I do really miss is sitting round a table with a bunch of people who until a week or two ago were complete strangers, having a chat, a drink and a laugh. NZ is very different from Oz in that respect an all, at least it is in Auckland.


Sunburn Cure?

My Cousin Matt

Aaaaanyways, we just chilled with our Matt at Aranga Backpackers for the night, witnessed a random German man rubbing cottage cheese into his sunburn (a brief reason as to why I can't eat cottage cheese at the bottom of this post), listened to them talk about their day thinning manderins and thanked my lucky stars I hadn't had to work in a field for a while before crashing out in the two spare beds in Matt's dorm.


Why I Can't Eat Cottage Cheese; A Psycholgically Scarring Account Of Inappropiate Comparisons.
When I was about 11 or 12, or maybe even 13, I don't really remember we had The Talk at school, a talk all the girls had about the ups and downs of puberty and becoming a young woman. It was all about periods and stuff and things and one of the things I remember was how to recognise if you have a problem "down there." We were told you'd have a discharge from your vagina similar to cottage cheese.
And that is why, to this day, every time I see cottage cheese I think of diseased minge and therefore can't put it in my mouth and now you will every time you open the fridge and reach for something to spread onto your Ryvita.

Bon Appetite.

permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 6, 2009 from Kerikeri, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip
tagged RoadTrip and Northlands
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Northlands - Day 5

Paihia, New Zealand

The Bay of Islands is considered to be the jewel of the Northlands. Kerikeri is a part of it but all the action is down in Paihia which is still tiny but seems to be aimed more at holiday makers than backpackers in search of seasonal work so there's heaps more to do. Me and Kama had booked ourselves onto an afternoon dolphin tour so we left Kerikeri and drove down to Paihia, checked into the Pickled Parrot backpackers (which comes complete with dogs, cat and, of course, a parrot) and wandered over to the wharf to catch our boat.


Applying Make Up... Before A Swim Tour

Rocky The Parrot

These tours are swim tours, they give you a 95% chance of seeing dolphins but only a 50% chance of swimming with them on account of the laws governing swimming with dolphins such as, you can't swim with juveniles or if the dolphins are sleeping.

It was a nice afternoon out on the boat but the dolphins weren't up for a swim, they decided to have a kip just as we got there. They sleep funny an all do dolphins, they shut down a part of their brain but leave the other part active to stay alert for predators and so they remember to breathe.

After spending a while following the sleeping dolphins around the crew gave up and took us to a spot for a quick snorkel but not before they did try and get us in for a swim. Kama saw two swim under her, I wasn't in the water quick enough but I'll be doing this again on the south island when my sister comes to visit. Fingers crossed for better luck that time.


Yah We Look Hot!

Just As Charming Under The Water

We headed back to the backpackers, watched a movie and crashed out pretty early.

All this Not Sitting Down All Day was taking it out of us.

permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 7, 2009 from Paihia, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip
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Northlands - Day 6

Tutukaka, New Zealand

This morning I was going parasailing on account of the fact I'm far too easily influenced by advertising and shiny posters. We were only looking at the little hut yesterday morning to check out the pricing for kayak hire but they had a poster up for parasailing around the bay so I booked myself in for a 1200ft view of the Bay Of Islands. Ah well, there are worse kinds of impulse spending I guess such as them little chocolate frogs they put next to check outs or 6 Big Macs and 2 large fries coz you went shopping with a hangover again and got distracted in the food court.

Its sooooo relaxing, seriously, no adrenalin at all. You kind of don't realise you're suspended 1200ft above sea level whilst anchored to a fast boat, you feel like you're floating, like when I went hot air ballooning, its so quiet and chilled out.

Then they reel you in, dip you in the water and get you back aboard ready for the next person to go floating off into the air.

The initial plan here was to meander down the coast to Matapouri which is a beach Kama used to go to when she was little but over the last few months she'd been having these, like, nausea/aniety attacks and she started having one now. She describes its as sort of like being hungover and being in a moving vehicle isn't the best thing for her so we missioned it down to Tutukaka with a quick stop at the Hundertwasser toilets in Kawakawa.

And yes, they really are just... well... bogs init. But at least they flush which is a definate step up from the long drops I was becoming accustomed to. There's a queue to use them though, I haven't had to queue for toilets outside of a night club since Brighton Pride when you had to start queuing for the portaloo at least 20 minutes before you even thought about needing to piss.

We got to Tutukaka where Kama decided she wanted to go home the next day. I was booked in for diving and said I'd drive her back once I was back but she decided to get her mum to come and fetch her instead. It didn't help that we were kept awake half the night by some NZ bird I can't spell or pronounce that has oversized feet and sounds like someone is strangling it.

Someone does need to bloody strangle it an all.

permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 8, 2009 from Tutukaka, New Zealand
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Northlands - Day 7

Auckland, New Zealand

So Kama was picked up and taken home and I headed out with Dive! Tutukaka to check out the Poor Knights Islands from underwater coz you're not actually allowed to set foot on them. As we were heading out and were being briefed on the marine life we could expect to see the boat jolted to a halt and a lad ran down the stairs shouting, "the skipper's just seen another hammerhead!"

Hammerhead?

ANOTHER???

Oh how very fucking comforting!

After spending a few minutes looking for it for a photo op the boat started up again and resumed the course to the Poor Knights.

Diving in cold water is really different to the warm, tropical water I learnt in. In Fiji I wore a very thin body suit in a rather fetching shade of pink with only a few weights on my belt. Here they kitted me out in a 7mm 2 piece wetsuit along with 12kg of weights. I had to get help to stand up and could hardly reach my feet to get my fins on. Once I was under water it was all good but dragging myself back onto the boat was a mission!

And I got bit by a fish! Food bit me! Poor Nights is a 100% protected marine reserve so I wasn't allowed to bite it back so I contented myself with giving it dirty looks. Its not like being bitten by a small fish hurts, I've been nommed on my small fish before, its just the surprise that they're brave enough to have a go.

The diving was awesome, shame about the pics. I'm still getting the hang of my novelty Straps To The Wrist underwater camera so most of my pics came out blurry. Terrible photography aside, I had a good day.

Afterwards I drove back to Auckland two days early on account of, amongst other things, the crap weather forecast.


And this is where me and Kama finish. That wasn't the plan but since when does anything go to plan? If everything went to plan I'd have been back in England 7 months ago. This time away, living in each others pockets has made us realise how different we are, how little we have in common and how differently we see every single aspect of life. I'd still like to try and make it work with her when I come back to Auckland but she doesn't want to. Maybe she's right. We're two different people from two different and apparently incompatiable worlds. Ah well, I'll keep getting involved with people who aren't right for me and I don't know why. Maybe because it keeps things interesting? Who knows? A friend of mine once told me there's only so many times something can break before it can't be fixed anymore and it looks like I'm on a mission to test that theory.

But anyway.

Life goes on and so does the Tiny Little Adventure Round NZ.

permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 9, 2009 from Auckland, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip
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North Island Day 1: Auckland - The Coromandel

Mill Creek, New Zealand

Why is it that no matter how little time I've been staying somewhere and no matter how little stuff I have to pack it always takes me about two hours to pack the car up? Admittedly, most of that two hours is me staring at everything hoping that it might somehow pack itself but still. I was at Matt's for like, four nights and I managed to move my entire life into his place in that short space of time and spread it around the flat into every available corner. Give me another week and I've have redecorated and started picking out new drapes.

Anyway, eventually I crammed my life into the Camry and headed out west to pick Andrea up, the lass I'd be travelling with who I met on the internet about three years ago and only met face to face for the first time yesterday. She doesn't appear to have too many psychotic tendencies though but keep an eye out for headlines screaming "English Backpacker Disappears In NZ After Internet Meet". She's originally from Leeds but now lives in Ohio with her fella and her kids and she's also in the Guinness Book Of World Records for having the biggest appendix in the world ever. My only claim to fame is once, in the pub, I staggered up to the guy who used to present Run The Risk, a UK kid's TV program in the 90's and asked, nay, slurred if he was "the bloke off the telly" coz none of us could remember if his name was Simon Peters or Peter Simons. I may or may not have drooled on his shoes. I'm not entirely sure.

I digress.

I picked up my new buddy from her brother's place and we headed off to the Coromandel region, first stop being Hot Water Beach. The aim here is to battle the hoardes of other tourists for a bit of sand to dig a hole in so you can sit in your very own hot spring on the beach.

Sounds easy yeah? It's not. As you dig the hole keeps filling in with waters. You dig, it fills and collapses. You dig some more. You build a small wall to stop the waves from lapping up the shore into your hole but still it fills in. By the end of it you don't want a hot water spring anymore. You want a cold water pool and an esky full of ice and beer. Then you realise you've been digging in the wrong spot anyway and the hot water bit is 5 metres to your right.

And shit is it hot! Yeah yeah, I know the clue is in the name of the place, it's not Tepid Water Beach or Little Bit Toasty Water Beach but seriously, it actually hurts. It should be renamed Really Fucking Hot Water Beach although we were the only ones bitching about it. You can take the pom out of England but you can't take the whinge out of the pom.


You Have No Idea How Long It Took Me To Dig This!

It didn't take too long for the novelty of potential third degree burns to wear off so we headed off to look for a place to crash for the night. I'd told Andrea we'd be camping for most of if not all of this trip on account of my laughable budget and she was like "yeah I love camping!" before remembering she hadn't been camping since she was 13 and that was in her back garden. This could be amusing.

The first place we went to was full, the second wanted at least two of your four limbs for an unpowered site so we headed back up the main road towards a DoC campsite on the map but it was getting late. Then we passed a sign for a bird And animal park at Mill Creek that also had campsites available so we duly swung a left onto an unsealed road. It felt like we were driving for ages up this remote little road in the middle of nowhere, I had visions of mutants emerging from the trees wielding chainsaws and waking up nailed to a wall with one or more of my organs missing as the signal bars on my phone dropped one by one.
Just as we were about to give up and head to the DoC site there was a sign telling us it was 500 metres away so we carried on, followed the campervan sign and stopped. It was deserted. There was an empty caravan with an annex to the left which looked like it had been there forever, to the right was an empty field and a shed thing. Ahead was a little path that lead between some trees and you couldn't see what was on the other side.

I'd seen this movie.

Eventually we found the office round the corner and were greeted by an overtanned hippy lady clutching a duckling who took $12.50 each off us, gave us directions to the showers and told us to feel free to wander round and look at the birds and animals. She wasn't even a little bit sinister.


Andi And Her Tent. Proud As, She Was.

I kinda felt bad for doubting the place because it's actually really cool, they have heaps of farm animals and birds that they care for and the facilities at the campsite are brilliant. I jumped into the shower and a quantity of sand the Sahara would be proud of fell out of my knickers.

I spent the rest of the night expecting a phone call from Hot Water Beach asking for their sand back.

permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 13, 2009 from Mill Creek, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip
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North Island Day 2: Catching Up With An Old(ish) Mate

Whangamata, New Zealand

We woke up in one piece having not been hacked to death in our sleep by marauding psychopaths, got our shit together and headed up to the town of Coromandel just to say we'd been there before driving back down to Whangamata where my mate, Alex, who I know from Wellington lives with his missus. He chops dead people up by profession but there isn't much call for that sort of work in Whangamata so he's currently assistant manager at the local New World which probably involves dealing with people with slack jaws and vacant stares (and that's just the staff) so he shouldn't feel like he's strayed too far from his profession. He's just not allowed to go at the customers with knives though which must be frustrating, I know, I worked at The Warehouse.

Something Alex seems to talk about alot are JAFAs which is Just Another Fucking Aucklander. They don't seem to like AUckland much in the rest of New Zealand, especially not in Wellington but y'know what? It made me realise how much I do actually love the place. I mean I love travelling round and seeing new places and I love camping out in the middle of nowhere and I love beautiful places in the countryside an all that but I realised that Auckland feels like home. I also realised that I was really going to miss it.

After catching up for a cuppa, we are all English after all, we headed to the wharf for some fishing where Alex managed to lose his $200 sunglasses. It might not have been so bad if we'd caught anything other than leaves but we left the wharf and tried our hand at kayaking and near drowning instead.


Alex And Me

Here's the thing about kayaking, I've done it a million times but I don't recall having to get past surf on a surf beach before. This time we did. Alex cleared the waves and left me and Andrea on the shore, we paddled our little hearts out and managed to get over most of the waves until one came right at us while we were side on and rolled us into the water. We weren't gonna be defeated though, we got back on and got through the waves to where the water was calmer and paddled ourselves out to one of the islands just off shore.


Me And Andi Looking Every Inch The Kayaking Professionals

Getting back was gonna be easy, the pros we were. We paddled ourselves back to shore, through the waves, aiming for the beach at a 45 degree angles just like Alex had told us. He sailed past us just as another wave took a disliking to the tourists and deposited me and Andi back in the water. We managed to hold onto the paddles but not Andrea's $200 sunnies, she managed to lose them an all, seems there's a direct corrolation between the price of sunglasses and how likely you are to lose or break them. I managed to keep hold of my $40 pair from the servo. Shame about my dignity.

Alex's missus, Claire, has a siamese cat that had kittens a few months ago so there were four kittens plus mum. God they're cute! And expensive, the kittens are like $500 each which is a bit steep for a tiny little weapon of mass destruction if u ask me. I love kittens though, these ones tear around the house, fight and play with each other before curling up together in a big pile of Cute.


And The Award For The Cutest Thing Ever Goes To...

Covered In $2000 Worth Of Pussy

After a meal and a game of pool at the local RSA we just chilled at Alex's with a few beers while I got covered in pussy.

Sounds like a damn fine night in to me.

permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 14, 2009 from Whangamata, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip
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North Island Day 3

Karangahake, New Zealand

Before we left Whangamata Alec took us surfing in order to top up the salt water levels in our sinuses because clearly we hadn't experienced a satisfactory level of Almost Drowning the day before. We spent a good hour and a half getting thrown about and dumped by waves before we gave up and carried on our way towards our next stop.


Looking Like We Know What We're Doing


Wentworth Falls
The star he is, Alex had put us up in a proper bed last night and thank fuck he did because it totally pissed it down, storms and everything. If he hadn't then we'd have woken up somewhat waterlogged at Wentworth Falls DoC campsite which is the start of a walk to aforementioned falls so we dropped by on the way to check them out.
It's something like an hour and a quarter walk to the falls up a slight incline that runs by a river. Fuck it's lovely! I could happily spend a day here, chilling in the river, wandering up to the falls, camping out. Its stunning and the falls are brillint an all and it's well worth the "difficult scramble" to the base. You can swim in the plunge pool if you don't mind every nerve ending in your body going numb in the freezing cold water.

Instead of staying at Wentworth Falls we decided to try and cover more ground on account of the fact maps over here lie. Just because it doesn't look far on paper the roads turn back on themselves and wind their way up and down hills and have corners that if you take just a teeny tiny little bit fast the back of your car tries to overtake the front and scares the fuck out of you, your passenger and any oncoming traffic so we carried on to a free campsite called Dickey Flats near Karangahake Gorge.


Dickey Flats

Dickey Flats River

I seemed nice enough, right next to a river but it has the best hidden toilets ever, I know it has loos because a sign near the gorge told me so but we couldn't find them at all. I ended up holding it in until dark and sneaking into the bushes like the classy girl I am.

If Dickey Flats only had one river before it probably has two now.

permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 15, 2009 from Karangahake, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip
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North Island Day 4: The Bet

Waitomo Caves, New Zealand

The trouble with free campsites is that sometimes they attract people who want to stay up all night and make noise which is fine unless me and my mates aren't the ones making the noise. Last night it was a group of Kiwi kids who, at one point at about 1am, drove a car through the busy site honking the horn. Their arguments which were conducted between 1am and 2am are as follows:

  • One of the lads is going to be "fucking killed" by the others and they made their way through the site looking for him. Loudly.

  • Girl number one seems to be after Girl number two's fella. Girl number two gives her blessing at the top of her voice with the words, "If you want sloppy seconds you can fuckin' 'av 'im!"

  • Girl number two is apparently having Sloppy Second's baby.

  • They made up and began singing to each other. No. Really. Actually singing.


    • It beats watching Eastenders anyway.

    Anyway, first stop today was Karangahake Gorge for a bit of a walk before breakfast. It's a really nice walk, pretty short an all so you can do it before breakfast and not starve to death. There's a part of it called the Underground Pumphouse and they recommend you take a torch. The only torches I have are the ones I picked up from the $2 shop that are about as bright as Paris Hilton but we took them anyway and ventured into the cave.



    Now Imagine Two Screaming Poms...

    Clearly we both watch too much horror. We didn't even get halfway in, Andrea hanging a bit behind before that kind of fear you haven't felt since you were five years old and thought the gremlins were behind you overcame us and we legged it out of the cave like the soft bitches we are.

    God I hope no one saw us.

    Next stop was the less sinister Paeroa, home of the "world famous in New Zealand" Lemon & Paeroa soft drink. We bought a bottle and pulled the obligatory tourist poses in front of the big bottle.
    L&P is a very very NZ thing and it's really popular. We don't have it at my bar in Auckland and when we inform customers of this we're met with a look of stunned horror and you have to leave them for 5 minutes while they recover and rethink their lives and their mixers. I haven't really tried it before, I'm a coca cola whore but we left Paeroa with me swigging the stuff from the bottle. I felt so Kiwi. I'll be referring to flip flops as jandals next and chasing after sheep on a Saturday night.


    Luxury, Mate!

    Tonight we'd be in Waitomo on account of the fact we'd booked ourselves in for some black water rafting action the next day, we were staying at a Top 10 campsite which had all kinds of exciting things such as a hot tub and a pool and no mozzies. There must be some kind of relation between the price of a campsite and how likely you are to get eaten alive by things you can't see until it's too late. Anyway. We got drunk and this is where The Bet was born, designed to get Andrea to do a bungee jump.


    THE BET
    If Andi does a bungee jump in Taupo I have to get a full minge wax. As in total. As in, not just the little bits round the edge to stop your dreddlocks sticking out of the sides of your bikini bottoms, every single hair on my private parts brutally torn from their roots. However, if Andi bottles out of aforementioned bungee jump she has to be my bitch for the duration of the trip.


    Is It Legal To Sign Contracts....

    ...When You're THIS Wasted??

    Shortly after the bet was made I text everyone I thought might have had a wax to gauge the pain on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being fine, 10 being Kill Me Now. So apparently it's about an eight or nine.

    I'm so doomed.

    permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 16, 2009 from Waitomo Caves, New Zealand
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    North Island Day 5: Black Water Rafting

    Waitomo Caves, New Zealand

    The first thing I thought this morning when I woke up in the back of my car was, "Fuck! I'm never drinking and making bets ever again!" My second thought was, "Fuck it's gonna be cold in the water in them caves today!"

    We dragged ourselves out of bed and arrived at the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company just up the road, signed our lives away and waited for the guides to show up. We saw a couple of folks walk in wearing harnesses and for one brief moment I thought I might have to entrust my life to a man with a mullet but they must have been on another tour. Our guides were Brydie who was far too enthusiastic for that hour in the morning and Cory who had wandered past us earlier masked in a pair of sunnies and clutching a cup of coffee. They proceeded to kit us out in damp wetsuits, a fetching pair of shorts, boots and a harness then they drove us to the cave entrance.


    How Hot Are We?

    Practising...

    The harness was how we'd be getting into the cave, we'd be abseiling 40 metres into a hole after a quick lesson on how not to die when suspended by your genitals by a rope. Ok so maybe not quite the genitals but that's how it feels. Once we were all at the bottom we waited while the boys checked to see that everything was where they left it before the descent then we were lead to a flying fox and sent down it in the dark.


    Note The Terrified Grin
    So far so good. The most difficult part was trying to eat flapjacks with the chin strap from the helmet keeping my jaw in place. At least it was until they handed us a tube each and told us to jump 4 metres into the water whilst holding it to our arses and all without drowning please. Actually easier than it looked at first and shit it was fun! It IS cold but the wetsuits are brilliant so its only really your hands that feel like they're going to have to be removed on account of the frost bite. Once we were all in the black water we were guided up the tunnel to get an education on the glow worms which dotted the cave ceiling. There were millions of them and apparently they're not worms, they're maggots and the glowy bits are their arses and they glow coz they're burning off waste matter. So basically it's shiny shit. Nice.
    They catch their prey in these snot like stringy things that look minging but y'know what? They can look as minging as they want while they're catching mozzies. Mozzies are my arch nemesis.

    The previous night me and Andi had been taking the piss out of the retarded look on the faces of the people on the promo poster as they gazed at the roof. Once we'd been lead up the tunnel we had to link up in a train, turn our lights off and we were lead back down the way we came. I caught myself gawping up like a slack jawed imbecile, tongue lolling to one side. If I was drooling it would have just been perfect. In fact I probably was.
    The tour was awesome, the glow worms were stunning and once we'd rafted and waded our way through the caves we scrambled up two waterfalls and emerged into the open, I for one was grinning like a Special, it was a brilliant few hours. The climb up the hill to the van was a bitch though but we were rewarded with a hot shower and tomato soup which, of course, I ate until I physically couldn't fit anymore in.

    Once we were home we chilled in the hot tub until I'd regained feeling in my extremities and I resembled a hairy prune. I would SO recommend that tour to anyone. Maybe not in winter though. Unless you're hardcore or don't want your fingers anymore.

    permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 17, 2009 from Waitomo Caves, New Zealand
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    North Island Day 6: ZORRRRRB!

    Rotorua, New Zealand

    Upon entering Rotorua you might as well hand over your cashcard and your PIN number to the city because it's going to obliterate your budget anyway, there's so much cool stuff to do if you can get used to the smell.

    Ah yes. The smell. You can't talk about Rotorua without mentioning the smell, it's sort of compulsory. Most people who've been to NZ are aware that Rotorua stinks like eggs. When eggs smell like eggs its fine but when something that isn't eggs smells like eggs suddenly it becomes so very very wrong. In some parts its rotton eggs, in others its not too bad but it's all on account of the fact the the whole place is built on masses of geothermal activity which can be viewed for free at a local park. Rotorua is also great because you can get away with dropping your guts and just blaming the steaming pools of sulphur. Bliss.


    Be Glad It Ain't Smell-O-Vision

    The weather wasn't great so we bypassed the Agrodome and I introduced Andrea to her very first backpackers ever and the joys of deciding who got landed with the top bunk. After sleeping in a tent for the last couple of nights she just wanted to be as far off the ground as possible so she was happy up top. By that time the weather had cleared up a bit so we headed back out to find the Zorbing.

    Zorbing, for those who live under rocks or on Mars, is where they put you in a big, plastic ball and throw you down a hill. You can go down the straight track with one or two mates or you can go it alone down the zigzag track, either strapped in or with a bit of water for extra lubrication. Its. So. Cool.
    When you first rock up you look at the slopes and they seem a bit, well, disappointing. They look a bit small from the bottom but once you're in your Zorb and you've launched yourself down the zigzag you discover they're plenty big enough but once isn't enough and it's a perfect way for filthy backpackers who've been living out of the back of a Camry to get clean.

    A word of advice though; take socks. They only recommend you wear socks if you have noticably long toenails on account of the fact there are seams inside the Zorb that you can catch them on and pull them back. This freaked me out enough to head back to the car and ferret out a pair that you couldn't break with a hammer or that hadn't crawled under a seat and started building a nest.

    We threw ourselves down a couple of times each, got well and truly soaked before Andrea changed into dry clothes and I kicked myself for not thinking about bringing dry clothes.

    Later on, my mate Spiky came down from Auckland with Tash and Sam and we hit up Lava Bar for a few drinks where I highlighted the fact that I'm a total lightweight and got absolutely hammered. Cheered me up no end though after a random emo moment I'd had earlier. Spiky's pretty much been my rock since me and Kama split up.


    Spiky, Me, Sam And Tash

    Once I'm back in Auckland m'dear, me an you are hittin town. Vodka is the perfect cure for everything. Trust me. Vodka makes everything good again.

    permalink written by  Koala Bear on January 18, 2009 from Rotorua, New Zealand
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