I was unsure about taking part in the Tongariro Alpine Crossing walk, as it was a 19.6km hike and was going to potentially be quite cold along the way, (hence the ‘alpine’), but I eventually signed up along with most of the people on our bus, and shuffled my way to the 6am take off, back along the windy cliff roads! After having a shoe check (to check that we had the right grip on our shoes) and renting some gloves (alpine!!) we headed off in the shuttle bus ...

After leaving the lodge and heading towards Blue Duck Station, we made a quick stop in Taupō, where David went and sky dived out of a plane! I, instead, took a walk by Lake Taupō and walked around the lovely little town, until it was time to go and pick up a shell shocked David and head towards our next stop. When we finally arrived at Blue Duck, after some very windy roads on the edge of the cliff (also remember we were in the random bus with no seat belts!), ...

After our few nights in Rotorua, we opted to do the special Maori experience at Lake Aniwhenua for the night (this was optional and you could have skipped it!) It wasn’t too far from Rotorua, and we’d hopped on a new bus (which was broken and replaced with a weird temporary bus making crazy noises and no seat belts! We were stuck with this for the remainder of the North Island), and the new driver was really nice, as well as the people on the bus. We stopped ...

Change of driver later, we hopped back on the bus for a couple of hours to head towards the moment David had most looked forward to: Hobbiton! This was the same day as we did the Waitomo Caves, as we left Raglan towards Rotorua, so it was a pretty heavy day. We rolled up about 3pm, to collect our tickets and have a quick look around the shop before boarding a coach to take us down through the farm towards where the set was built. We then spent time, with the guid...

Another early morning arrived, and we piled back onto the Stray bus for the journey to Raglan. Passing through the town of Hamilton, where we’d originally planned to hop off for a few days, we stayed on the bus until we reached the seaside, surfing town of Raglan, where we spent an hour or so in the town, shopping and wandering by the harbour. After shopping in a typical ill equipped tiny store for our dinner, we headed up a mountainous hill (there are lots of ...