Hello! Well we are now on the north island at Rotorua. We spent a fun day at Kaikoura although we didn't get to whale watch :-( all the tour were fully booked. In the end we decided to go on a fishing trip which was really cool, we caught crayfish and perch for our dinner! We also saw the rare Hectors dolphins while out at sea which was really cool, they are the smallest dolphins in the world, really cute! A seal pup came up and swam with the boat aswell. It was my first time on a fishing boat and it is def sea sicky! lol Really cool catching something for yourself for dinner though, and it was delicious. We also drove out to see a seal colony and got up really close to loads of seal (maybe too close? lol). We ended up getting the ferry across at picton to wellington on tuesday earlier than planned due to a big storm due on Wednesday, it meant missing out Blenheim and the vinyards but was worth it because it was really bad. There were some storms on the north island recently that were really bad, lots of places losing power, a few people died so we knew how bad they can be. On the wednesday we drove up to Lake Taupo but it was really dangerous weather loads of towns had no power traffic lights wern't working so it was a bit chaotic, we saw a lorry turned over and loads of trees and debris kept hitting us. A few more people died but it wasn;t as bad as last week. We have been really lucky becuase we missed the first storms on the south island and we drove up the noths island as they hit some of the south island. The drive to Lake Taupo was cool driving past three active volcanoes (one being Mt Doom!). We went to see Huka falls, a bee hive honey cantre and some really cool volcanic areas. One was called craters of the moon and had loads of craters and fumerols. We then went to Wai-o-tapu themal reserve, where there are craters, geysers, bubbling hot mud, sulphur caves , fumeroles, there was amazing colour and very smelly sulphurous air. It's a massive volcanic area on the north island, so there are loads of hot pools and mud pools everywhere, really cool. Good news is, to make up for Hen's wet birtday, we got tickets to see the All Blacks play Australia in Auckland! We somehow managed to get some really cool last minute seats. Really excited :-) So we are heading up to Eden Park for saturday 2nd. Tomorrow we may got zorbing (that's right zorbing!), which is basically rolling down a hill in a massive ball, or we can go zydro, with water in the ball lol. If it's not windy we will try and skydive again but it's not looking good. We are going to the cinema tonight to see Batman, yey! Before returning to our hillbilly motorcamp lol. Hopefully when we got up north we will get to go see hobbiton aswell. Emma, don't worry about the knifes and customs, they are fine as long as they are in the main luggage, defo not in your hand luggage though. If they need to be declared it is always really clear on the forms aswell, not a problem. The guys at Barrytown have made over 7000 knifes and no one has had a problem at customs, they explain it to you there, hope that helps lol. Well hopefully this won't be the last blog and I will get to do one more before then end. I am saving my pictures untill when I get home, then I will put them all on because my memory card got a virus in an internet cafe and I lost some photos :-( So don't want to risk the other one. Anyway hope everyone is well, Aaron you shoudl check the post for the next 5 to 10 working days lol. Bye for now x x x (bad news about the quantas plane breaking!) x x