On arriving at Auckland airport, we discovered that confusion around the international date line meant that Daniel's mum had turned up to meet us the previous day. After profuse apologies, and many hugs, we set off in the car up North with a third member of our Fellowship for the next fortnight. The road up to the Bay of islands was mesmirising. In fact, driving the roads of New Zealand is always amazing, around each corner is another view, another unexpected mountain, valley, waterfall, or procession of elves. OK, we didn't actually see any elves, as such. But there was lots of evidence that they were around. Lots of elfy things.

It would be possible to fill two weeks of interesting fun with the many roadside delights on offer. Our favourites were: SheepWorld (sadly no photo as we sped past too quickly), World Famous Toilets, the "Last cheese for miles" and cafe Eutopia (a little slice of Glastonbury in a layby). However, we managed to drag ourselves away, up to our destination Waitangi. Waitangi is where the Maori signed a treaty with the Brits agreeing to be under British rule. They also, due to an "error in translation" on the part of the whiteys, unwittingly handed over all of their land to the Crown. Ooops.

To see all of the Islands in the Bay, we hopped on a boat tour, undeterred by the freezing winds. Almost immediately the boat was surrounded by a big pod of dolphins, including a baby, that proceeded to swim with the boat and generally put on a performance worthy of Sea World. Later on, we found another pod, and the captain announced that as they did not have a baby it was possible to swim with them.

Daniel decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss, and a lack of swimming trunks wasn't going to stop him. The shorty wetsuit almost provided decency, and he was off. We'll talk about the New Zealanders weird preconceptions about their weather later, but lets just say that a wetsuit you wouldn't wear in summer in a lake in the UK does not provide a great amount of warmth in the sea in winter in New Zealand. After the shock of the cold, though, he saw the dolphins, and everything else was forgotten. So close he was almost battered in the face by a dolphin flipper, a nervous crowd of hypothermal humans swam gracelessly round the most amazing beings. Truly great, though he almost lost his left toe to frost bite. Celia and Carole enjoyed watching form the sidelines, though there was a hairy bit when Daniel, happily paddling along, nearly got mowed down by the boat.