At roughly 18.00 on 17th November the full Walton clan were finally reunited. Liz, Jim & Ray had come in from a couple of days in Sydney. Caroline, Davy & Éamha had been in Christchurch for a few days already. Ma, Pa, Ash and myself arrived back from the bus tour. So we had no choice but to crack open the champagne and celebrate. Dad was the only one to have seen Liz & Jim since their engagement, so the rest pf us got our first chance to congratulate them.

Needless to say we didn’t get our dinner out in Auckland!  But not to worry.  We really enjoyed our stay.  On Monday morning we took a flight to Queenstown.  The flight in is out of this world, spectacular approach through the valley.  Our accommodation is not quite the same standard as we have become accustomed to but the scenery makes up for it.

view from plane

We spent the day checking the place out and reassuring Eamha that there are plenty of boats and ducks about!  And she just loves the icecream

no bath here.....

yum yum

On Tuesday we took a bus tour to Arrowtown, taking in a winery and cheese tasting.  We headed back to queenstown and took a jet boat tour around the lake and up the river.  It was very windy but Eamha loved it!

Came back for dinner to find that the restaurant and bar is closed for the next two nights.  Luckily there is a hotel nearby and Eamha went to sleep in her buggy.

This morning we called Teresa to wish her a New Zealand happy birthday as it is the 12th here!  Happy Birthday Granny!

Today we are going to take a steamboat cruise which stops at a small animal farm so Eamha should be happy with that!

The very reliable alarm clock’s batteries died and didn’t wake us up at 6am to watch The All Blacks v Scotland.  She didn’t wake us up till 6.45!  Headed to the Sky Tower for a great view of the city.  It is 328metres tall making it the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere.

Took a cruise boat around the bay.  Great way to see it all.  Eamha slept through the whole thing!  Hopefully she will sleep this evening in her buggy and we can go out for our 2nd dinner!!

our balcony over viaduct harbour

Drove back to auckland.  The drive was amazing.  The Sunshine made all the difference.  Dropped off Davy’s favourite car!  Checked into the Sebel Suites on Viaduct Harbour.  Fab apartment overlooking the harbour.  Davy hasn’t seen credit card yet but well worth it!!

Yipee.  Finally some sunshine.  Eamha and Caroline dressed for the occasion.  We took a cruise boat around the islands.  Beautiful.  Saw the dolphins.  Was very bumpy from high winds but Eamha just loved it and fell in love with boats even more.  Caroline nearly lost her hat but Davy sorted that out by tying a scarf around it!  We hit the beach again for the afternoon where Eamha decided she wasn’t being fed enough and ate some more sand!

Russ and Gill (owners of the motel) gave us some snapper for our dinner which Russ had caught at 6am. Yummy Yummy.

Back to the boats for Eamha for the day.  She would not leave the pier!  We took another trip to Pahia and it all got too much for her and she fell asleep in the buggy.  This meant our first dinner out!  Yipee.  It also led to Eamha’s first time to sleep through the night in nearly a week.  Thank God!

We took a boat across to Pahia on the other side of the bay.  When the skipper let Eamha drive the boat back her obsession with boats began. 

After a short walk across to the sheltered cove of Long beach brought Eamha to her first visit to the seaside.  That sand sure tastes nice and fill you up too.  No need to midnight snack as Eamha sleeps till 4am!

We had a great nights sleep until 2am when eamha decided it was morning time and she wanted breakfast!  We checked out of the hotel by 6am and collect our hired car.  We headed north to Russell in the Bay of Islands.  The little Corolla with 200k on the clock was getting high pitched lugging us and all our bags up the winding hills but it got us to New Zealand’s oldest town in one piece by lunchtime.  Accessible by ferry from the main road, Russell is a lovely little town on the Bay of Islands.  We stayed in the Commodore Lodge Motel, in a lovely poolside apartment just by the pier.  Unfortunately the pool isn’t heated so no splish splash for Eamha.  Eamha was delighted however to find some very friendly ducks which she got great pleasure in feeding bread to!

As the weather was very overcast we watched the Melbourne Cup on TV (The sunshine looked nice!).  Eamha looked for another midnight feast!

We finally landed in Auckland after our 10hour flight from Singapore, laden with fruit to keep Eamha happy.  A word of advice……. don’t bring fruit into this country!  It added an hour onto our passage time through the airport following a sniffer dog finding the goods in Eamha’s buggy in the baggage hall!!

We checked into our airport bog standard hotel and chilled for the afternoon.  After managing to keep Eamha and ourselves awake we took the lift to our floor.  And just the trick for our already shot nerves……. the lift broke down!  After about 10mins of nothing happening Davy managed to pull the doors apart…..yes, my hero!  We discovered that we were between the ground and 1st floor.  He found some handle that opened the doors to the ground floor and we escaped!

Back to the room, Eamha conked out at 5pm.  The day is finally over or so we thought!  She woke again at 9.30 but went straight back to sleep and so did we!