El Presidente

We flew out of Rarotonga at 6am. The flight to Auckland was only 4 hours, but as we crossed the date line - we actually jumped ahead by 22 hours which was quite surreal.

We picked up the car at the airport. Total Dad mobile! It's comedy. Sinead noticed a plastic pointy thing attached to the front left hand side of the bonnet. "What's that?" "It looks like something you'd stick a flag in." "Oh my god, we've got some kind of government car." Sinead spots, quite hilariously, that the car looks like an African presidential car so we christen El Presidente and refer to it as such on our trip to New Plymouth.

We meet Jenny and Ben at the port in New Plymouth and jump onto their sailing boat. After a little bit of drama trying to get it started and worrying about the fact that the tide was going out and we were only 12 inches of the bottom, we got going and headed out to sea.

I enjoyed my early tasks of pulling the rope to raise the sail and winding something up and sat back with a lime flavoured beer. It was all very pleasant. Then it got a bit choppy. Suddenly I didn't feel so good anymore and went all quiet. Sinead, realising this was an unusual phenomenon, asked if I was OK. At which point, I immediately stuck my head off the side and threw up. I continued to do this until we got back to shore. I don't think sailing is for me.

Back at Jenny and Ben's place, we got a tour of their enormous and beautiful garden. They cooked up a storm on the BBQ - chicken, prawns, scallops, halloumi, spring onions and mushrooms. We sat on the veranda with all the fairy lights, stuffed ourselves and finished the night off with a game of Shanghai darts. Sinead impressively emerged victorious.

Today we caught up on some much needed sleep and went for a walk along surf beach. It was nice lying in the sun and it wasn't unbearably hot because of the breeze from the sea. I managed to remedy some of the tanning issues so I shouldn't look too bad when I get home. When I stood up to walk on the sand it was boiling and I could still feel it through my Haviannas. We're going to have to be extra careful.

Tomorrow morning we set off for Rotorua and are looking forward to some high octane activities and a dip at the Polynesian Spa. I might even treat myself to another massage.