New Zealand’s such a great place with lots of things to see and do but it’s easy to forget that the population’s only about three million people and so things aren’t quite on the same scale as back home. A case in point was Rainbow’s End, the “largest” theme park in the country. What they neglected to tell us what that it’s also the only theme park and about as big as one of Alton Towers’ car parks. It was great to be able to walk straight on to every ride but it was hard not to laugh at the weedy rollercoaster and scoff at the log flume. I made sure, however, that I didn’t visibly act like the “bigshot” foreigner - it’s just not polite.

Went to Auckland Zoo on Saturday and, forgetting the ethics of removing animals from the wild and caging them up in a city zoo, it was great! Highlight were the hippos, monkeys and zebras (“basically, stripy horses”). Sue’s planning a big trip to an island next weekend and, hopefully, we’ll get to go to a thermal water park where you can watch films in a hot spring.