Well, not long now till I spend 24+ hours in a plane to get back to sunny ol' London town. Luckily I get an hour stopover in LA on the way - phew! In the meantime I'm in Auckland again having completely not manage to make the south island. Spent the last few days up in the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland - another amazingly beautiful area of New Zealand. Hike up to a waterfall, then kayaked up to it over the mangroves - pulling fresh oysters from the mud on the way. Then a long drive down the west coast back to drop off the car - passing amazing sand dunes and stopping off to look at stupendously large trees, the kauris in cathedral grove. Amazing. We got there quite late, so had the biggest tree (2000 years old and 13m in diameter) to ourselves for some silent contemplation of just how frikkin' big it is. Big.

And apologies for everyone who can't get to my site via ultrahi.net. Enom, my DNS lookup provider, have now told me there was 'some problem' with my credit card but won't say what. To rectify this I need to fax over a copy of my credit card and a copy of my latest statement. Muppets. Obviously this is not straightforward when you're travelling round the world so it will be a few days to fix - plus, because they've disabled my account, I can't even check to see which credit card I used to try and pay for the URL. Sigh.

In the meantime found a cool new language - sinhalese! This is one of the most wonderful looking scripts that I've ever seen, really curvy. Some of the characters look like cats or foxes and others like... well, let's just say it's rude and leave it at that, missus.

One thing about New Zealand is that it has amazing amounts of naturally generated energy, mostly from hydro-electric and geothermal sources. This was brought home yesterday when we went to see the dam open just north of Taupo - an almost empty, serene little pool suddenly transformed into this raging white water torrent, an act that is repeated five scheduled times a day over half an hour. Having said that I wasn't in the best way to appreciate it having had a heavy night out in honour of a) St Patrick's day and b) having a new nephew.

Yes, Nathanael James has finally decided to come play in the outside world (although it has been chilly in Britland of late so you can't really blame him for wanting to stay warm and comfy in my sister, Georgette, for a bit longer). Although Nathaneal isn't actually a Paddy's day baby (by the mere matter of an hour) I got a text when the celebrations had already kicked off down here in New Zealand. One bottle of champagne and numerous toasts later Louise and I were well on the way to a suitable frame of mind for the yearly Irish celebration. I've now been enjoying slightly too large emails from my family, who will be getting free tutorials on email etiquette and image compression when I get back home, to see Nathaneal's wrinkled little face for the first time. I've uploaded these to my photo site if you fancy a look for yourselves - ah, bless.

So now the family titles have been extended - I'm an uncle, my older sister is a mother, Abigail is an aunt (at 12), mum and dad are grandparents (and will be reminded of it regularly) and nan is a great grandmother! Feel like I need to get a 'Dummies guide to being an uncle' to understand what my uncling duties should be... Have to have a chat with my own uncle, Steve, to find out what he thought about that. A quick search of the web seems to reveal nothing relevant so maybe I've found a niche in the publishing market. I'll file that with my idea for make-up that contains multi-vitamins so you look healthy and feel more healthy at the same time (copyright 2003, Matt Hobbs TM).

Right - enough family stuff (for now). I'm off out to enjoy the delights of the Cormandel Pennisula, including its famed hot beach where you can dig your own spa around low tide due to thermal heat under the beach. Crazy. Think I'm getting addicted to spas now which is worrying. Had a great time on St Paddy's day hiking up to some falls north of Taupo and stopping for a swim in the beautiful, freezing, clear river, before sitting under the hot spring that flows right into it. Ah...

Well, actually I'm now in an Internet cafe in Taupo - an extremely touristy town at the north end of Lake Taupo, New Zealand's biggest lake. Lake Taupo is an old volcanic crater, like much of the central plain in the north island. The camp site we're currently staying at has it's own thermal spring based hot tubs which are absolutely lovely and a lot less stinky than the ones down in Rotorua (although a lot less impressive as well). All in all, an amazingly beautiful area and we've been extremely lucky to get some amazing sunshine which was with us as we visited the surfing town of Raglan on the west coast and had some of the best sushi in months...

This luck also extended to a beautifully clear day walking along the Tongariro Crossing. This day started slightly earlier than usual - having to get up at 6.30am for a bus to the start of the walk. An easy start gets you warmed up before hitting the devil's staircase, a 300 foot ascent as steep as most house stairs. All of this was made more interesting by an iron man competition running past us as we puffed and panted our way up (it's been a few years since I did any serious hiking and it was showing). At the top you reach the first of a few volcanic craters, this one a big, open expense of red dirt and a nice flat break before another steep walk.

The top of that section was pretty much the top of the route we were taking, and the views were absolutely amazing. You could see pretty much from coast to coast if you could tear your eyes away from the nearby scenery. The perfect cone of still active Ngauruhoe to the south, volcanic 'trees' to the east, a steaming grey fissure torn from the surrounding brown hill to the north and our ascent to the east. We sat for a few minutes to have lunch, and were immediately swarmed by the only animal life up there - hundreds of huge blue bottles. Very surreal!

After the lunch, a rapid descent down to the sulphurous emerald lakes down loose scree. As soon as we stopped trying to keep our balance and just ran down things went a lot more smoothly. Past the lakes, where hundreds of saturday hikers such as us were stopped for dinner, another flat crater, this time with an amazing frozen lake of volcanic rock, frozen like a big pool where it had flowed from the volcano. Then another steep slope, followed by views down onto the blue lake - another huge clear lake in an old crater. Then it was all downhill - although still another three hours to go - before we reached the car park for the trip home, passing hot springs and down alongside fast flowing streams in mystical woods.

All in all an amazing trip and one I heartily recommend to anyone else heading to New Zealand. It's not an easy climb and we were extremely lucky with the weather. Apparently a few people die each year on the walk and, having seen the age (and girth) of some of the people hiking with minimal supplies, I'm not at all surprised. The parks councils in New Zealand are desperately trying to change the view of the crossing as the 'best one day hike in New Zealand', as that doesn't express some of the dangers associated with it! I certainly felt pretty woozy from my vertigo standing at the very top, and at the edge of the amazing volcanic outcrops.

With that under our belts for the day we had a celebratory drink at Cafe Habitat - a backpacking hostel/bar in town, actually pretty much the only bar in town! There we met Charly, an Aussie bartender with whom I invented a new cocktail - the 'Even cocksucking cowgirls get the blues', an evolution from the original cocksucking cowboy (via the cocksucking cowgirl and influenced by the wonderful Tom Robbins book). For those keen follows of bartendology, this consists of kahlua, butterscotch snapps, blue curacao and baileys - I'll leave the relative mix as an exercise for the reader.

Yep, the puns keep getting betterer... I'm now in rainy Auckland, just landed from Melbourne an enjoying the 'delights' of the Budget Inn on Beach road. These delights are made even more pleasent by there being a karaoke club on the floor above me! Not quite sure of the logic on that, but it explains why there are umpteen hundred young oriental lads and ladettes wondering through the lobby (at first I thought the place was just popular with Japanese backpackers).

Next stop is sorting out a new phone, as my Oz mobile won't work over here... In theory should just be a case of getting a new sim card and slotting it in, but you never know.

Hmm... I seem to have been a bit remiss in my blogging again! Tried to do an update a few days ago but Blogger seemed to be down - guess the transition to Google owned property isn't 100% smooth... Given that I'm forgiven I shall carry on regardless.

I've been in Melbourne for almost a week now. It's a great little place. Much more spread out than Melbourne and a lot more laid back in general. All the fun action in town is focussed around the CBD (Central Business District) and Fitzroy, all handily linked by Melbourne's wonderful trams. It is these trams that are the cause of a local traffic feature not to be seen elsewhere - having to pull into the left of a road to turn right (if you waited in the middle you'd be tram fodder). Apparently in the old days you were asked which five junctions this rule applied to as it was such a strange one - thanks to Nigel my god father for that nugget.

The weather has been mildly erratic to say the least. When I first arrived it was a chilly 20 c, a slight shock post Byron Bay's almost tropical weather. A week later when we arrived back in from Lorne it was 40 c, but very dry - not at all as brutal as New York's humid 35 highs. Now it's 17 c with major winds and rainstorms, not to mention hail - so as you can see it's important to check the weather before you step outside.

Weather aside I've been having some very entertaining nights out, mostly along Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. The food along here is also superb. There is also a very strong arts scene and lots of great little galleries located all over the place. On the downside margeritas seem overprices in the First Floor bar...