This is the capital of the geothermal activity in New Zealand with steaming hot springs, exploding geysers, bubbling mud pools and loads of sulphurous gas therefore giving the whole area a lovely eggy smell! Uumm umm! Lol We headed straight to the city’s I-Site to find out some more about the activities on offer here and much to our surprise (as we are so indecisive) booked our accommodation for 2 nights, a Maori cultural night, a visit to the museum, a visit ...

Haera mai! So we need to fill you in on what’s been happening since our last blog which was in Russell. Sunday 19th We realised today that we have had the camper for a week now and we are still pretty high up the north island so best get cracking on the lower part if we are going to fit everything in. We both decided that although the Bay of Islands is lovely it was time to get going and start heading back towards Auckland in order to get to the lower half ...

Welcome back! So ill start where we left off following the last installment... Monday morning we departed Red Beach on our journey to the far north and ultimately Cape Reinga, ending up in Dargaville for the night. Not much to say, its one of those places you drive 'through' rather than 'to'. Only thing of note was Aimee 'walking in' on a slightly larger than average Maori woman on the bog! Needless to say Aimee was more embarassed than said Maori woman! Ooh, ...

Kia Ora Everyone! So after updating our blog on good friday (which was actually thursday back home - weird!!) we walked into the centre of where we were staying (Mangere - suburb of Auckland) and got some food before wandering back to the h9ostel. Did we mention the fact that apart from the odd food joint everything else was closed as apparently it is law here that nothing can open on good friday or they are fined by the police!! Not good news for us but gave us...

Morning all, Just a quick note to say that we arrived in (not so) sunny New Zealand this morning (at like 4:45am) so as the rest of the city was sleeping weve been uploading pictures. Apparently its good friday today which we had completely forgotten about so its law here that businesses cannot open (damn!). Looks like we shant be doing much today... We shall update this post later when weve actually done something interesting... Ciao for now and happy ...