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  • Day 1

    It takes balls

    August 16, 2018 in New Zealand ⋅ 🌧 10 °C

    We are off on a New Zealand adventure to visit Kelly, Aaron, Claire and Ritchie in Cromwell, a small town about one hour from Queenstown. Well it would be one hour except the three co-drivers insisted driving no faster than a glacier moves.

    The holiday actually started a day earlier taking Riley to his holiday home. He was so sad to see us go that he could barely stop his tail wagging and only the thought of daily swims and playing with other dogs could console him.

    Unfortunately we fell foul of NZ's Border Patrol. I admitted I was carrying hiking boots and that took two people armed with tweezers and wire brushes twenty minutes to remove all traces of Riley's hair from them. But they were on to me, I was probably using the boots as a decoy and trying to import contraband into NZ, so to protect their borders they x-rayed all our luggage and they discovered my stash. Three round objects, were they apples, drugs, no something considerably worse, juggling balls!! The balls got a separate run through the X-ray machine and if I was unable to do a proper three ball cascade then the rubber gloves were coming out.

    Having survived that oversight we now faced a short wait in the airport lounge for Caroline to arrive from Auckland. Meanwhile Ann spotted an Icebreaker clothing shop, a Nick Nack shop and a lolly shop, hurry up Caroline. We made it out with just a few kilos of sugary treats and our credit rating intact.

    Next adventure was our rental car, after the great budget fiasco Ann wanted to thoroughly check the car for dings and scratches, well actually since it was cold and raining she wanted me to check it all out. Just needed the paperwork which she assured me was in the boot. Five minutes later I was back in the car sans paperwork so Ann sent me out again to unload the whole car. Still no luck so I got Ann to check under her feet and there it was! But it wasn't that bad we had to wait 20 minutes for the windscreen to defrost and that gave me enough time to get some feeling back into my fingers.

    The drive was picturesque if not slow and we made it to Cromwell just on dusk, 4 pm, and settled in front of a nice warm fire, they certainly know how to have winter over here.
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