Mike and Becky's trip coming to an end...

Our friends Mike and Becky from SB have been in NZ for the last 2 weeks. So far we've gone up to see North of the North Island which was beautiful and scenic with the Bay of Islands and huge Kauri trees. Then we drifted through Aukland with a little taste of city life. After getting a bit rattled and learning a valuable life lesson about being a tourist, we got back to Rotorua. Since being here, Mike and Becky have watched too much rugby, met a few locals at 'staff party' for the NZ sports academy, seen lots of sheep, soaked it up in the sulfer hot pools, and driven about 5000 kms in a tiny car. After Rotorua, we made it to Wellington in a short 7 hr drive. But it was all worth the drive seeing the Marborough Sounds and a bit of the South Island. We started staying the last journey driving from Rotorua after Tim's rugby game (they got thrashed and lost by 4 tries... Tim didn't start and played the last 20 mins). We all made it to a tiny city called Bulls... yes named after the man cow. Bulls is a short 2 hrs. from Wellington. We tried making the 1030 interislander (the ferry connecting the two islands... the interesting thing is that you actually travel northwest from Wellington to Picton on the South Island). The 1030 ferry was cancelled due to 'mechnical troubles' so we had to stay an extra 3 hours. BUT we finally got to Picton at 10PM. Picton was hopping when we got there... just kidding... nothing was open! the only place showing any sign of life was the BP petrol station where all the tourists went to get a bite to eat! The next day we took a water taxi to the Ship's cove, Captian Cook's santuary in NZ where he stayed 4 times to replenish and repair his ship. We walked 10 kms to our lodge. It was beautiful there... we ended up staying 2 days! Then we took the ferry back (3hours) ... and ended up driving all 7 hours back to Rotorua. BUT it was a great trip. Now on the checklist, fishing, sheep shows, hangi, super 12 rugby game, and goodbye! Check out the pictures below...

Drive thru-a-bull 

Tim on the Interislander home 

Punga Cove Resort 

Kayaking in the Marborough Sounds 

Kayaking fun 

View from our Hotel room 

More from the Marborough Sounds... on Queen Charlette's track 

Tim on the wiseman chair 

Heather on the wiseman chair 

Guess where... 

4th lookout point on Queen Charlette's track 

3rd stop on Queen Charlette's track 

On Queen Charelette's track 

2nd stop walking on Queen Charlette's track 

1st stop walking on Queen Charlette's track 

Captian Cook's cove 

Marborough Sounds... 

Marbourough Sounds.. 

Marbourough Sounds. 

Heather and Becky on the interislander 

Don't get jealous Amour... it's not a REAL dog 

Some bad luck...

So things here are good OTHER than our recent trip to Aukland. After going to check out northland (above aukland), we stopped in Aukland to check out the muesums and stuff. On our last stop, we parked at the muesum for 2 hours and when we returned... everything in our car was gone! Yes, we were vicitims of a tourist break-in. The worst part is that our friends from SB got all there stuff stolen... ipod, camera, passports, tickets, a DVD player, and all their clothes (~4000$). They were really bummed. A man saw some dodgy men taking things from our car so he wrote down their rego # (license plate) and a desciption of the car. So we ran off to the police to tell them... we wrote a report and then they said it would be 3-4 days until a file was even created and about a week until they 'looked into it'. So basically all of our stuff is gone. We talked to the Rototua police and they said we should have brought it to them and they could have done more... they also checked the rego # and found it belonged to a convicted theif who has stolen stuff before! and they still haven't or didn't do anything about it.

Update: the good news is that Mike and Becky have home owners insurance which covers their stolen goods and will be reimbursed when they reutrn to the states. For HSR and Tim, we will be covered by our credit card insurance for the Kauri wood plate we bought and the stolen cell phone. BUT we are S.O.L. for our clothes and other stolen items...
Furthermore, the police haven't called us or updated us even though we had the guy's rego # and that he was a convicted theif and has had a prior record of breaking into cars. That's a big city for you!
We still have our health and the incident has only made us stronger and conscience about being a tourist.

Is that lake green? 

Wei-o-tepo thermal wonderland steam 

The devil's cave in Wei-o-tepo thermal wonderland 

Amour ja baby?