Last day in NZ

We've clawed back the NZ joy after missing the bus yesterday: after fuming for a few hours, we decided to get ourselves (and our bags) off the streets and went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - interesting. Very sinister and weird and cool in parts, pretty true to the book. They took away Willy Wonka's god-like aspect though, I think the whole troubled-childhood aspect was a mistake. It felt pretty decadent going to the cinema at 11am...anyway, after that we felt rejuvenated and had a fun day wandering around Auckland - it's an ok city; not incredibly cool and pretty like Sydney, and not huge either, but it has some lovely parks/sea views. We found a cool market. Then Rebecca picked us up on her way home from work and we had a barbeque at her house - yummy.

Today we're going horse-riding - we've wanted to the whole time we've been in NZ, but only just got round to organising ourselves. We'll be riding along the beach...hopefully it'll be lovely.

Anyway, tomorrow we fly to Fiji and we've been informed by Lonely Planet that there won't be many phone-lines or any internet access on the islands we're going to (we're travelling round the Yasawa island group) so this will probably be my last post for a while. (We get back from the Yasawas to the capital city, Nadi, on the 16th - day before my birthday!!). So, be warned that there may not be much emailing until then (arrgh!! don't know if I can cope...) but feel free to email anyway, I will reply as and when.