This was the scene of the great fishing bonanza when we (excluding our host and captain Crispin) caught loads of edibles fish for the BBQ. Soon after this was taken, our chilly bin was full of snapper. I hooked into something genuinely huge which tore out reams of line, tangled up in everybody elses line ( requiring us to cut B's line - ooops!), circling the boat and even leaping out of the water (couldn't identify the bugger though!) before snapping the line... oh well, plenty of food was caught... oh yeah, Crispin caught an octopus...! Me with the larger of the Snappers caught... this one was 40cm long and was smoked on Crispin's smoker - a world apart from the chemically 'smoked' fish you get in the UK!

After hooking into a nice bag of fish, we were treted to this beautiful sunset...

We spent a night in New Plymouth - on west coast, quite far south of North Island. Very nice coastal city with everything you'd want of a small city... we miss out rugged and more wild South Island though! We went to one of the free live gigs which play all through summer here, the band were a bit old and played classic rock covers, cheesy fun!

We had a nice 50km bike ride from New Plymouth to the base of Mount Taranaki - a very cool and big volcano which is due a big bang! B was worried that the few cars that pass would not see me, hence the dust-bin man jacket!!