Hi Everyone! Hope you're all well. We're now in the north of the North Island in Paihia on the Bay Of Islands. It's a gorgeous little town with a fantastic ice-cream shop!! After Taupo we travelled north to Rotorua where we went to a Maori concert and hangi (traditional feast cooked in underground stoves). It was an excellent evening featuring lots of scary looking men in little more than a g-string dancing the Haka. We also visited the Kiwi Discovery. Kiwi's are endangered and it is a kiwi research centre where they collect the eggs from the wild, incubate them at the facility, allow them to hatch naturally and then monitor them in captivity until they are at least 1Kg in weight before releasing them back into the wild. By this weight the kiwi should not be as prone to attack by predators and stands a much higher chance of survival. In the wild a kiwi chick has only a 5% chance of survival. We were really lucky and got to see a kiwi egg hatch. Considering we only popped in on the off-chance there would be a tour on that was pretty good timing! Since we've been in Paihia we have been on yet another boat trip out to the Bay of Islands. We saw some seals, a killer whale and lots of dolphins, which was fantastic! We visited Waitangi this morning, where the 1840 treaty was signed between the British and the Maoris. But more importantly we visited a chocolate factory where they hand-make choccies. Naturally we felt compelled to invest in a few, yum! We are stopping here a few more nights because it's so nice, but this weekend we are heading back to Auckland to see if we can sell the car before we leave New Zealand. love from Helen and Ben