When we landed at Auckland the pilot announced, "Could those passengers in need of wheelchair assistance please stay seated for the time-being."

After clearing immigration and customs we had to go through quarantine, filling in a MAF declaration detailing our route and camping activities so far; this is to prevent people bringing unwelcome parasites or crops into New Zealand. Our tent went off to be inspected for 15 minutes and when we went to collect it they said they had a found a weevil in it and that it would have to be fumigated. They asked where we were staying and we replied, "in the tent," so the lady frowned and went away for a bit. When she came back she said that, as they had only found one weevil, they had decided not to fumigate the tent after all. Her friendly parting words were, "Next time you might not be so lucky." An American lady next to us had missed her connecting flight (and lost the money) because they had insisted on cleaning all her shoes and outdoor clothing, even shoes that had never been worn. It does seem a bit silly, especially if they are going to cut corners for some people but not for others.

Auckland certainly seems to have more than its fair share of turbo-charged boyracer dickheads. Walking along the city streets you can barely hear yourself think over the bloody "vroooooommm SSSSSSSS vroooooommm SSSSSSSS" racket.



Our campsite is very nice. Most of the people staying here are European, chiefly British, French and German, and it's great having hot water again (there was no hot water in Fiji). In true dogshit-on-my-shoe fashion we've managed to pitch our tent right next to the uber-squeaky, communal, campsite trampoline. Who needs an alarm clock when you can be woken up at dawn every morning by some little French t**t bouncing and squeaking away, inches from your head.

This week we have been to the Bay of Islands; a maritime park about 150 miles northwest of Auckland. We bought a couple of backpacker passes for the NorthLiner Express coach service to Paihia and then used a passenger ferry to cross the bay to our campsite in Russell.

The NorthLiner Express has got to be the most uptight coach company on the earth. There was a sign at the front of the bus spelling out the many rules, and these were forcefully reiterated by our driver "gentle" Ben (Beeyen), whose thick white support socks were pulled right up to his knees. No smoking. No drinking. No eating. No putting your feet up on the seat in front. No looking out of the windows. No smiling.

The Bay of Islands, as its name suggests, is a coastal bay with lots of islands in it. It's very scenic and there are lots of water-based activities on offer - island cruises, dolphin-watching, fishing, kayaking etc. Paihia is bigger and more touristy than Russell (but then, so is Kitchenroyd), but they are both relatively small and sleepy; the only off-licence in Russell closes at 8pm! Both towns played important parts in New Zealand's history - Russell was the site of the first European landings around 1830 and served as New Zealand's capital "city" until 1840.

One thing that has really struck us about New Zealanders is their wanton selective cruelty to animals.

The Brushtail Opossum was first brought to New Zealand from Australia in 1837 and there were numerous releases of both Australian- and New Zealand-bred stock until 1930. Today there are almost 80 million possums in New Zealand and they are damaging crops, trees, and the future survival of native wildlife such as the Kiwi bird, New Zealand's national symbol. New Zealanders therefore despise the possums and do everything they can to kill them and convince visitors to do the same. In towns there are posters of stoats, weasels and possums headed "WANTED DEAD!" You can actually pay money to go on an "Awesome Adventure" called the "Ultimate Shooting Experience" where you are given a gun and taken through a forest at night to shoot possums out of trees for fun. You are encouraged to drive over them as they cross the road. You can buy possum fur goods and pelts in souvenir shops, where they are marketed with statements like "by buying this product you are helping to save our native forests from devastation." This simply cannot be true. Since colonisation, 90% of New Zealand's native forests has already been chopped down or replaced by the faster-growing (and therefore more profitable) radiata pine which was introduced from America. Perhaps the real issue here is one of ecomony. I can see that there may be a problem and I don't have a ready solution, but the sick and gleeful attitude of the people here is disgusting. New Zealanders can't be animal lovers because they only consider an animal's life to be worthwhile if it happened to live here over 250 years ago. As an alternative to murdering hundreds of millions of innocent animals for the sake of having a national symbol so rare that you never get to see any anyway, I suggest they go out and shoot the few remaining Kiwis, sell their beaks and feathers to tourists in souvenir shops, and make the Possum their national symbol instead.

We spent a day tramping (hiking) around the Russell Peninsula, through Kororareka Point Scenic Reserve, Waihihi Bay, Flagstaff Hill, Tapeka Point and Long Beach in Oneroa Bay. There is an amazing variety of birdlife. My favourite so far is the fantail; they are really friendly chirrupy birds with a big black and white feathery tail which they flick about like a fan. There is also the tui, a larger black bird with two white pompoms on its throat. When it calls it 'clears its throat', then makes a sound like a recording of a cuckoo being played backwards, so "hchchchch OOO CUCK". We had great fun walking through the forests repeatedly shouting "OOO CUCK" and having them "hchchchch OOO CUCK" back. Well, I did anyway.

Then it was back on the HardLiner Express for a short journey north to Keri Keri. The campsite at Keri Keri is aimed more towards backpackers than the others we've stayed at recently and a scowling clip immediately condemned it as "shabby" and "tatty". By New Zealand standards she's probably right but it's still better than anything you'd get back home. All the campsites we've stayed at so far have had big communal kitchens with free fridges, rows of gas and/or electric hobs, toasters, boiling water, microwave ovens, televisions and loads of tables and chairs. All the showers and toilets (or ablutions as they're called here) are clean and well-maintained (though I'm not convinced by the sloping white plastic ceiling in the gents in Aranga which had been buffed to such a high mirror shine that you can plainly see, and this morning I really wished I couldn't, exactly what's going on in all the other cubicles).

We glanced dutifully at New Zealand's oldest stone building (1835, like, whoopee doo) in Keri Keri Basin then tramped up the river past Fairy Pools to Rainbow Falls where I went swimming in my underpants. I can hardly believe how many cicadas there are here nor what a god awful racket they make. On the plus side they do keep flying into clip's face and hair, which is kind of fun.



On the way back we visited Rewa Village, supposedly an exact replica of a Maori village from precolonial times, complete with a riverbank latrine known amusingly in Maori as a "Pae Pae".

It now appears that possums are not the only creature in the Antipodean speciecide portfolio. Stoats, weasels, ferrets, deer, elk and boar are all on death row. It seems that as soon as we comment on how cute, nice or pretty something is we see a leaflet or poster calling for its urgent massacre, and as usual it is "our forests" or "our kiwis" that are at dire risk. Even the poor plants have not escaped the eagle eyes of the conservation psychopaths:

"DESTROY WILD GINGER BEFORE IT DESTROYS OUR FORESTS!"

"ENVIRONMENTAL WEEDS [pretty flowers],
DELIGHTFUL BUT DESTRUCTIVE!"

I wonder how New Zealand will cope in the future when tectonic plate movements finally bring it into direct contact with a land mass bristling with fearsome small mammals and ornamental shrubs. By then I expect they will have erected an all-encompassing biodome made of bullet-proof glass, with a minefield and remote-controlled flamethrowers positioned strategically around the perimeter.

In Keri Keri we met a lad who was born in the same building as clip! He and his girlfriend had bought a car for their time in New Zealand, having decided this was better than using the Kiwi Experience I mentioned earlier. So far it's been described to us as a "shagfest", the "f**k Bus" and the "Vagina Experience" but now, after having actually seen one of these coaches and the people on them, I would call it the "Liposuction and Alcohol and Nicotine Addiction Experience".

Yesterday morning something embarrassing happened to me. I went to the campsite toilets for a poo, wiped my bum, then accidentally dropped the piece of toilet paper. It went under the divider into the neighbouring cubicle, which happened to be occupied. Worse still, whoever was in there actually pushed it back again. I didn't hang around to say thank you.

The pelican crossings at crossroads in New Zealand are great fun because you are allowed to cross diagonally. Imagine hundreds of pedestrians setting off simultaneously from all four corners. It makes you feel like a member of a motorcycle stunt team.

Back in Auckland we stayed in our first large mixed dormitory at Auckland Central Backpackers; four bunk beds in a room about the size of a garage. All the lower bunks were taken so clip and I slept on two of the top bunks, opposite each other. It was so painful to climb and descend the metal ladders without shoes on that clip had to have her pumps in bed with her. We didn't get much sleep because we were both so worried about falling out of bed or not hearing the alarm clock, or, in clip's case, kicking her pumps over the side.

Christchurch is very English. It's like Oxford and Stratford mixed together. Colourful wooden trolley buses decked out with sunflowers trundle around the streets. People punt up and down the River Avon sipping champagne. University students wear smart grey shorts with their socks pulled up. The Anglican cathedral in the central square dates back to 1880.

We soon tired of the piledriver next to the campsite and drove north to the craggy coastal town of Kaikoura, home of whale watching in New Zealand. The wind must have changed direction because, minutes after pitching the tent, a violent storm started up and continued throughout the night. The wind felt like a hurricane and it absolutely chucked it down. Some tents got blown away. Some people just packed up in the dark and left. The bad weather continued for several days.



Now there is one thing that really dweebs me off and it's this. You join a queue of people waiting to be served and patiently wait your turn. Finally you reach the front and the person serving recites something on the lines of, "Good afternoon, how may I be of excellent service to you today?" to which you brightly respond, "Good afternoon, do you have any rooms available for tonight please?" Then the telephone in front of them rings and they say, "Excuse me for ten minutes while I deal with this call and leave you waiting like a fool for being so stupid as to show up in person." It drives me mental. Surely it would be better to employ someone else to answer the telephone and allow the servers to at least concentrate on offering their excellently unremarkable service.

At last, in Kaikoura, we managed to use this rude and annoying practice to our advantage. When we arrived at the Whale Watch terminal there were already fifty people in the queue and the tickets had almost sold out. We noticed a public telephone along from the counter and discovered that Whale Watch have an 0800 number. It was almost impossible to stifle the laughter as we telephoned the ticket counter from the same room and got the last two tickets on the 10am trip. My, how we chuckled as we strutted back through the queueing throng.

Kaikoura's whalesome fame is a consequence of it having an underwater canyon just offshore. The water depth suddenly increases from 90m to over 1100m, and this is an ideal habitat for Sperm Whales which can dive to over 2000m in search of food. The Whale Watch trip consisted of a short drive to a jetty in a knackered old coach, then two hours at sea aboard a special boat rigged up with a GPS system to track each whale's last known surface position, and a directional underwater microphone for listening to the clicks the whales use to locate their prey. Their 160dB clicks are the second loudest sound in the animal kingdom (a Boeing 737 at full power is 'only' 140dB), surpassed only by the blue whale whose ridiculously loud 180dB clicks enable it to communicate with other blue whales anywhere in the same ocean.

Sperm whales are so-called because, when early whalers caught them and cut them up, they found that each whale had 2.5 tons of a creamy white substance in its forehead. Apparently nobody thought to ask why it was in its forehead. It wasn't until much later when they caught a female and found exactly the same stuff that they realised they had made a mistake, but by then it was too late to change the name!



The whales come up for air every forty minutes, so all we had to do was sit patiently and wait for one to pop out and start panting. They really are magnificent animals. We saw four sperm whales in all, each from about 30m away. They stayed on the surface for about ten minutes while they got their breath back, then, as they dived back under the water, they waved their enormous tails in the air as if saying goodbye. They made clip cry, bless her.

Half a day's driving took us to the seaside town of Picton. Picton is a bit of a dump; it's only real claim to fame is that the interisland ferries happen to dock there. We spent a day hiking more than twelve exhausting miles of the nearby Queen Charlotte track, which runs along the mountainous ridge between the Queen Charlotte and Kenepura Sounds. It was disappointing because the incredible view was frequently obstructed by thick bushes. Bushes encrusted with cicadas whose only purpose in life seems to be flying straight into my face. I can't stand them.



The next day we went to Tuamarina Annual Rodeo and sat on the grass in the sunshine watching cowboys get thrown off bucking broncos and angry bulls. The whole competition seemed to be about who could get most hurt and still manage to stand up, and clip and I found ourselves willing the bulls to inflict more and more painful injuries. The most astounding event was the Sheep Riding competition. Children, all of whom appeared to be under the age of eight, sat astride fully-grown sheep and then struggled pathetically to hang on as the sheep charged manically across the arena kicking its legs. The crowd cheered loudly as little girls in vests and shorts were dragged over the ground alongside the sheep. This is in a country where, by law, you have to wear a helmet to ride a bicycle. One girl was trampled by the sheep and slowly sat up holding her head. Another, who couldn't have been more than six years old, was thrown over the sheep's head and lay limp in the dry mud until someone came out and carried her off. The crowd cheered louder.

We parked our car in Picton and sailed as foot passengers across Cook Strait to visit New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, on the north island. We are staying at the Wellington City YHA hostel and I have to admit it's pretty swanky. We've splashed out a bit on a private double room (9 pounds per night each) as a belated Valentine Day treat. The last time we slept in a proper bed in our own room was more than four weeks ago. This morning we've been to Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum, partly to look at the general exhibits (which are very good) but also to let clip visit the Lord of the Rings exhibition. Apart from seeing the actual costumes used in the film I thought it was rather dull really; you might as well save ten quid and watch the extras on the DVD instead. Plus, the exhibition was full of irritating people who obviously thought that the whole thing really took place. You could see that they genuinely considered it a concrete part of our history. I wanted to bash their heads against the models and shout "LOOK, CAN YOU SEE HOW YOUR FACE IS DENTING THIS PAPER MACHE TOWER? DO YOU SEE? THE WHOLE BLOODY THING IS JUST MADE UP."

For me, camping isn't just about tripping over guy ropes, sitting on warm toilet seats and waking up every morning with a stiff neck. It's also about being part of a community, albeit a transient one, that places importance on sharing and consideration for others. This brings me rather nicely to the subject of today's rant: Wooden Picnic Tables.

The people who run campsites thoughtfully provide wooden picnic tables for the campers to use. Unfortunately there are always more tents than there are wooden picnic tables. So, do the campers share the tables nicely with each other? Do they chuff! They wait until no one is looking, carry the table over to their tent, put something on it, like some old flip flops, a carrier bag or half a bottle of warm pop, and then go out for the day leaving the rest of us feeling bad simply for wanting to sit down. Maybe it's just a coincidence but the people who do this always seem to be German.

On one occasion we pitched our tent next to a tent that had a picnic table literally inches from its front door. Carefully, we dismantled their beautiful handcrafted pebble masterpiece (claim of ownership), then moved the table about two yards closer to our tent so that we could share it with them. Later that evening they returned from their day out shouting and, as I watched from my tent in utter disbelief, picked up the table and moved it so far back round the other side of their tent that we couldn't even see the frigging thing anymore. And yes, they were German.

We sailed back to the south island on The Lynx, a very sexy catamaran ferry that whooshes along at 50mph where it is allowed to, (the ripples it makes are, predictably, "destroying our forests" so it has to tiptoe along like a canal barge whenever it comes within sight of land) and, after the pleasant surprise of discovering that nobody had broken into our car, we headed west to the geographical centre of New Zealand, Nelson. Nelson was very much a Lilliputian Grimsby so we weren't too bothered to find that the campsite was already full. Instead, we carried on the Motueka, a small sunny coastal town surrounded by vineyards, just south of the Abel Tasman National Park.

Could someone please pop across to Germany for me and see if there is anybody there. The entire German population has surely been transported en masse to the west coast of New Zealand. clip says she is "losing her mind" as a result of "their f**king incessant buzzing". I have to admit, it can be quite difficult to relax in the tent at night with all the shouting going on. In addition, the campsites seem to have turned into motorhome conventions. clips moans "it's like trying to get to sleep in a sliding door factory. I need a door and walls between me and these freaks."

From Motueka we went on a 'day trip' to see the Te Waikoropupu Springs near Takaka. These freshwater springs pump out between 8000 and 14000 litres of water a second which produces a pretty impressive river and makes the springs the largest in the country. The water coming out also has the tenuous honour of being the clearest spring water in the world. It was, I suppose, quite clear.

The next day was a tramping day. We drove up, up and up into the Kahurangi National Park, finally parking our car in Flora carpark at an altitude of 950m. The lids on our instant soups cartons were bulging out. We had planned to climb right to the summit of Mount Arthur but by the time we reached the halfway hut at 1400m (air pressure 87%) we were already into thick cloud so we changed our plan and walked back to the car via Flora Hut instead. Mount Arthur is made of marble and was created when limestone, which had been squashed under the sea, was pushed upwards to make a mountain. There were sheer marble walls with trees somehow growing out of them, marble pebbles lying around, and car-sized lumps of bright white marble jutting up out of the ground.