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He’s here, and he’s lovely!

Erin and Baxter

Born 18th December at 8.48 in Worthing, weighing in at 7lbs and 7oz. We are super proud.

And super sleepy!

Night night blogfans

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For our whole trip we were mooning at each other, looking dreamily into each others eyes singing

Just the two of us,

Building castles in the sky,

Just the two of us,

You and I.

But after a while we realised that even though we love spending time together, it would be fun to widen the group a bit.

So we invited these guys along:

The Murrins

No Gavin! I’m not talking about my parents, I’m talking about this new addition to the family:

Baby Mallory

Due to enter the world on Boxing Day 2011.

Exciting times ahead!

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On our way home we went to Walt Disney World and Universal Studios in Florida.

Going out on a high!

Our friends Simon and Erin McFairbarneany were already there and we met them at the hotel we were all staying at.

Us and the Never Ending Voyage posse

We were pretty exhausted after flying from Auckland to Los Angeles then onto Orlando. It had taken us 26 hours, but thanks to time differences we arrived just three hours after leaving New Zealand.

That completely melted my mind, and jetlag was a feature of our six days in the theme parks second only to FUN FUN FUN!

On the first day we went to

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BABABABABABAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

We’re back!

Hello everyone, and sorry for the very long delay since our last post. We are sure you have been on tenderhooks! Due to an ongoing lack of wireless we haven’t been able to update as efficiently as we, and no doubt, you would like.

Internet life has been a lot like this: 

You got mail

So what have we been up to since you last heard from us?

Well we spent a week in Rotorua first. 

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What a week! In our last post we told you about our upgrade to a lovely apartment here in Taupo. Well, that set the tone for what has been a brilliant week of relaxing with a little bit of doing cool stuff.

Gavin outside Anglers Lodge where we are staying

The first couple of days it was rainy, but we didn’t mind one bit as we’d planned on taking some time to enjoy being out of hostels, watching telly, cooking nice food, drinking nice wine, doing aerobics, washing up and so on. So that’s what we did.

And we saw a few of these too.

Sunset over Taupo as seen from our window. Don't worry - we know how lucky we are.

Once the sun came out we set about exploring the locality, kicking off with a stroll to Huka Falls via the hot stream.

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Kia ora good evening, as they say on the news. You will be pleased to hear we have successfully avoided rum since the recent episode and our livers are almost fully functional once more.

Thank goodness! We had a day or so of recuperation before ticking off the final few things there were to see and do in Wellington and the surrounding area.

We’d been to most of the famous attractions, so we ended up spending our last few days at pretty random places. We took a walk into The Hutt and ended up at a Polish Festival, which was ace! There was dancing and I ate a sausage.

For Gavin, it doesn’t get better than that!

Dzien dobry my friends. Dwa piwa.

Next up was

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Our first two nights in Wellington were spent at the YHA in town – the most expensive hostel we have stayed at so far, but it is a 5 star residence.

And you say I never take you to nice places!

Well, it wasn’t exactly the Ritz was it, but it was fine for a couple of nights.

We still had some wine left over from our Marlborough trip, so we drank that and I got a bit mischevious.

32 years old and still sticking it to the man

Such an embarrassment! The next day we moved into

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WINE!!!!!

Yep, you know who was getting more excited the nearer we got to the tippety top of the South Island, and therefore nearer to her spiritual home, the Marlborough Wine Region!

Well actually, it is your favourite wine that comes from there isn’t it?

Oh yeah!

But first dear readers, we departed the fair city of Greymouth with heavy hearts…only joking! We dove onto the bus yelling, drive, man, drive! But do you know what, our driver had forgotten 2 of his passengers, so just as we cleared the Greymouth border, we had to turn around and go back!!! Would have been funny if it wasn’t so excruciating!

Anyway, we did finally make it out, and our next stop was 6 hours later in sunny Nelson. We stayed in the Lovebug room at The Bug backpackers, a cool and classy backpackers.

For once!

Yes dear.

Dinner at The Bug

We came to Nelson as it is the

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Back in Franz Josef we sat and listened to two ditzy but lovable English girls recount all the things people had advised them on their tour of New Zealand, which included such useless gems as

Auckland is just get in and get out

and

Christchurch isn’t worth seeing

so when people said that Greymouth was a deadsville town with nothing in it we took it with a pinch of salt. After all, everyone in Australia said Canberra was going to be crappy and we loved it. Don’t listen to the doubters right? Well, in this case wrong!

Greymouth at peak going-out time

Greymouth isn’t just a deadsville town with nothing in it, it’s a massive hole of broken despair. The only tourists you see are queueing at the iSite tourist information place to book the first bus out of here. The only locals you see are

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Last time you heard from us we were waiting to get into our Wanaka room having just jumped off the bus from Queenstown. The bus ride had been fun – our comedy Scottish driver kept us entertained and the bus had no heating this time, so we arrived in Wanaka very chilly!

Obviously there is some pre-requisite that buses to and from Queenstown have to lack any environmental controls….

Wanaka then. Lake Wanaka is the third largest lake in New Zealand, and surrounded by Mount Aspiring and his little cousins, it is pretty as a picture, literally.

Gavin with his new stick alongside Lake Wanaka.

We decided to dip a toe in the world of YHA and plumped to stay at the Purple Cow Hostel. What a great decision! One of the best hostels we have ever seen. Lovely room, huge kitchen, massive TV room and the best common room ever with this amazing view.