TAURANGA - NEW ZEALAND

Tauranga turned out to be one of the highlights of New Zealand, stayed at a great place that was full of people my own age not old people or gap year students. Exploring the town included an interesting but long (5 hour) walk to the top of a big hill with some great views.

Back to the serious business of finding work I went on an all morning e-mail blitz to as many companies as I could find on the internet. Finally after about 4 days I got an e-mail back titled "the job is yours". It didn't start until 15 March and was in Kerikeri right up north. It felt like the pressure was off after that and I could enjoy myself a bit more knowing that I had work in a few weeks time (or so I thought). I went and got myself a cheap laptop (which got destroyed in a flood in the Philippines several months later)

The day after that the hostel asked me if I would like to do some cash in hand work dishwashing in a restaurant. So the next day I turned up thinking it should be a steady enough job.

How wrong could I have been, I had to work like a slave at full speed all day. One minute the owner was complaining I wasn't going quickly enough, the next I wasn't doing the job properly. He was expecting to perform as quickly on the first day as someone who had been doing the job months. When I had a break I was expecting someone to take over but came back to a massive pile of dirty dishes.

At the end of the day when the owner mentioned the next day I told him there wasn't going to be a next day. He paid me 80 dollars for that day and that was it, he wouldn't have got me back if he had offered me ten times that amount!!!!!!

Little did I know at the time that was going to be the only days work I would do in New Zealand...............



The rest of the time I spent there was with 3 from Yorkshire, like myself they also had work lined up. A lot of the time they were trying to save money so we spent time in the hostel watching DVDs. We did manage a few good nights out round the town usually after having a few beers on the hostel balcony.

It was one of those places that I seemed to have got stuck in, but then again after the last few places it was not a bad thing. Getting hit by massive rainstorms didn't help matters.

From there I was heading north....................