Party Time and Riots.

Our first week in New Zealand was mostly spent settling in, and catching up with friends and family. We're staying at Nicki's house which is in a town called Morrinsville, about half an hour from Hamilton and an hour from Auckland.

It seemed we arrived in party season, and upon arrival, we're immediately enlisted on the party circuit. First up it's an exlcusive invite to possibly Auckland's swankiest party of the year, Nicki's friends Russ & Nita's 3 year old daughter Katya's pirate birthday party where everyone's dressed up, funnily enough, as pirates. Several Ginger beers later, and a day or two to recover, party number two is upon us and the nautical season continues with more friends. This time it's Phil, an expat from England who loved Auckland harbour and it's city views so much he bought a boat to live on and do up and so we spend an evening bobbing and sipping wine looking across to the lights of the city.

So far so good, and when party number 3 cast us an invite, which was to the pre-opening dinner of a new swanky winery and restaurant located on a very posh Island in Auckland harbour called Waihiki, there seemed no sensible reason to refuse, the head chef, Will being another friend of Nicki's.

The dinner was lovely, the wine was lovely, and the ferry trip over in the afternoon too, was lovely. The last ferry home that night though, at 11.30 was less lovely. Well I say that, it may not be true. We unfortunately were not on it, as like us, the guests of the two unknown wedding parties on the island and the big dance party also had a similar timetable to ourselves. Left with about 70 other people on the pier, we stood watching as our boat sailed merrily into the blackness without us.

Despair was not upon us however, as the ship's crew assured us it would return in an hour for us. To a sensible man, and woman, common sense would suggest that with a 45 minute crossing each way and a couple hundred drunken people to get rid of at the opposite end, an hour was optomistic, and true enough, it was a much longer wait. As we sat there waiting, you could see the crowd of mostly young, drug fueled dance party idiots becoming more and more restless as they wandered around in little groups bumping into property and each other. As the situation became less and less savoury, and as all hope of seeing the ferry again dwindled we started thinking about moving away from the area. As people broke into the ticket office, smashed bottles and stole onto boats moored in the harbour we decided it was time to go, leaving in time to see the mob setting fires on the road and ransacking the terminal. Taxi's being as rare as ferries off the island, it was only by jumping into someone else's that we managed to escape to the otherside of the island, and to Will's place where we spent the night before leaving the next morning on the now very unpopular ferry.