Hmm I guess its about time I bored you all with the NZ trip ...

Well those of you who've seen me since I've returned may have twigged I liked the place (which is a bit of any understatement...) We only got to see hightlights of the Country in our rapid 2 week 2 island tour!
The conference was great and I made lots of good NZ friends who some time in the future I'll go back and see (and we did stay with one of them when we were in Wellington). I had a lot of late nights followed by the 7am start to get breakfast before 8am ... I still can't understand how I managed to survive on such little sleep?!?! I did lots of mingling, hence met lots of different people; alas this was unlike the majority of the UK group (with one person being at the centre of it) who had all their meals sat together rarely talking to other Guiders outside the UK group. I survived one meal like this early in the proceedings but after that there was no way I was going to repeat it if I could! We did trainings which can be transferred with little tweaking to the UK programme, saw places around Christchurch (I went to the Antartic Centre and went in a snowmobile followed by the more sedate gardens in the afternoon (where I found out about Edmonds a great NZ institution, and one of my friends gave me their cookbook (essential in all NZ kitchens) at the end of the conference .... it has much more sentimental value because she gave it to me as she was the person who'd explained about them when we went to the gardens in their old factory site). I got on a bus at 5am to go to an ANZAC dawn parade (because they went onto the beaches at Gallipoli at dawn), it was a lovely way to do a rememberance service as the sun was rising even if it did mean getting up early!

South Island tour highlights ... ferns, glaciers, hot pools, more ferns, Punakaiki Rocks (aka Pancake Rocks), greenstone, more ferns, panning for West Coast gold (a la Rough Science), loads of autumn colour!

North Island hightlights ... Wellington & its harbour, Te Papa (the NZ musuem! Fab and Free!), Watching Rugby on TV, Drinking Hawkes Bay Wine, briefly seeing Napier, Jet boating to the Huka Falls (fab boating experience ... was I on an adrenalin high when I got off!) Maori dancing & hangi, Gloworms in Waitomo, Skytower in Auckland

Random items ... Finding a can of SARS on our first drink stop on the South Island tour (its a cola drink made in Oz (aka the West Island)), Pinky Bar (marshmallow & caramel covered in chocolate .. bit sweet for me), Fresh up apple & nectarine juice (yummy), Pies variados, Afgans (chocolate biscuits), Canterbury Draught & Tui and not forgetting beetroot in burgers! Laughing my way around the islands with Sarah (and the American girls for the South Island), the phase 'bad dobbie' when being less than polite about some members of the UK group (which I have to say was justified most of the time)!