Rock climbing solo....

I was a bit sad to leave New Plymouth. I had had a really great last day with Antony and Alex and crew. They took me to the beach where Alex and I went on a nice walk while Antony surfed away. New Zealand is really beautiful, I wish I had more time to check it out. The ocean, the rolling hills, the color of the electric green grass... it's just lovely. Alex and I were going to take a short hike up a hill call Peluma or something of that sort but he was called into work unfortunately, but I still went. It was a bit of a scary hike... The first half-way up there were stairs, but then there was nothing but really steep, jutted rocks and a rope to help pull yourself up. I felt as though I was rock climbing, well - I WAS rock climbing actually, for the first time EVER. You definitely don't want to lose your step here... I thought twice about whether I wanted to go to the top but I did, with a little bit of encouragement from some people coming down. Beautiful views of the whole (small) city. I met lots of nice people going up, go figure seems to be the trend around here. One of which is from Scotland (Alan) an older man that I may have a drink with sometime this week, (he was also coming to Melbourne). I met a couple other guys as well, one from Ireland and the other from England here doing a little visiting/traveling. Lots of people here on work visas.

That evening I met up with Antony, Alex and one of their co-workers for some vino. We stayed up for hours drinking bottles of wine and talking, it was so much fun. I really get along well with them, it's always a shame when you meet nice people and then have to leave them. Even though I was just drinking wine, I really hadn't drank that much in a while, and I ended up with a bit of a hangover when I got up the next morning 4 hours after going to sleep! Poor Alex had to work in the morning, at least I was just going to be passing out on a plane.

Speaking of planes, New Zealand is the first place I have ever flown in that doesn't make people go through security for domestic flights. There is absolutely none... it's so crazy! I kept on thinking... there has to be one somewhere, nope never came. Unbelievable. This is goin down in history! I don't know if that made me feel real safe or real NOT safe. Guess they've never needed it before, I'd hate to be on the flight that does!