3 weeks in new zealand

Well after one week of work its time to think about my holiday again...
3 weeks in New Zealand, a well needed holiday, I spent the entire time at my brothers/parents farm without broadband (not even rubberband speed), so checking an average email account is painful... I went to an internet cafe in whangarei, but they didn't have plug and play capibilty for my laptop....
I spent about 4hr online at 56kbps.... and sent 5 email, and read few here and there that looked important.

The world without broadband is a bit unusual, from using the web for everything - tv schedules, music, recipes etc I was left pondering what to do next.
So I braved the outside world, and remembered that pre internet life wasn't that bad. Okay I couldn't buy stuff on ebay or buy songs online, so I went to a record shop (they even had records) and bought 5 LPs (dont have an LP player....) and 3 CDs (all of which are now part of my MP3 library).

I realised I spend way too much time at the monitor/keyboard, not a life changing revelation but a good reminder to get out a bit more.
Broadband in the north of New Zealand is fairly few and far between, you can get dialup 115kbps, or 336kpbs on GPRS/3G but pretty much anything over that is a business only level.
Telephone exchanges are being upgraded all the time, but with only 4million people living there and a land mass approx same as most of england you can see where the problem is.

One thing that made my holiday was the music, NZ has a massive rock following, try www.therock.net.nz for a very good rock station - definately 5 stars for quaity of music.

I will post a few holiday snaps up on my site shortly, my brothers wedding went well (a week later and it would have bee 400mm under water) photos here http://www.craighogan.com/hogan-tucker , goodluck to Brett and Jo as well.