When we were first planning this trip Anna was very keen to do a Pacific island after NZ to top up our tans before heading home. The Qantas BA round the world ticket gave us the choice of either Fiji or the Cook Isles and we plumbed for Fiji. We had ideas of desert islands, white sands and a few palm trees and but for the weather we would have had our wish. At Christmas 2012 a cyclone blew through Fiji flattening lots of the outlying island resorts. Because of...

We flew to Nadi on Pacific Air, which is Fiji's national airline and is a bit of a joke. The plane was a poorly specified 747 with flickery screens to watch, dreadful food, the ice creams excepted, and uninterested staff. We got a lovely view of the Coromandel as we took off then it was cloud all the way. At Nadi airport we were greeted by 3 people playing guitars and singing and were very quickly through seemingly lax customs and bio security checks. We got ...

After a slow and tedious drive along the coast from Coromandel we finally got to State Highway 1 and we were quickly driving through the south western suburbs towards the Waitakere Ranges and our campsite for the evening. The Waitakere Ranges are an area of hills and forest just 20kms from central Auckland. We bought our permit from the visitor centre which was adorned with prodigiously endowed male Maori carvings. We drove to the coast and a place called Piha. ...

We headed to the Coromandel Peninsular in the hope of a relaxing couple of days to catch up on some sleep and not do very much. Our first night was spent on a DoC site near a town called Thames, eating tuna pasta and sheltering from a thunderstorm, both of us with a cold. Perhaps not the start we'd intended so we were therefore pleased to wake up to a clearer day and set off to find Cathedral Cove, which promised a very beautiful beach with an impressive cathed...

Part of my birthday present from Anna and her parents was the promise that we'd go black water rafting when in NZ. Having driven west from Rotorua (not very nice) yesterday afternoon we arrived at Waitomo (pronounced why-tuo-mo) at lunchtime today. In Maori this translates as water hole and is apt as there are 300+ caves in the area. There is also a bewildering array of different tours and operators. Luckily the young lady at the iSite (tourist info) was very ...