North Island is much more volcanically active than the South Island and most of this is concentrated in the region around Lake Taupo which, itself, has formed in the caldera of a very old volcano. We drove north from Palmeston North along the desert road which peaked at over 1000m and should have offered fantastic views of Mt Doom (not its real name) and the 2 other neighbouring peaks. Unfortunately it was raining heavily and the cloud was low so the only view...

Wellington is the capital of NZ and quite a contrast to the small village of Picton that the ferry left from. We parked by Te Papa - a museum, more of which later, and walked into the city centre. It was very quiet, like there was half the number of people that you'd expect to be there. The shops were not that exciting but there were some nice bits of architecture and older buildings. The parliament building, fondly known as the beehive, was not among them tho...

After Hanmer Springs we drove north to camp at a rather small and busy DoC site near Kaikoura, ready for the next day's activities. Now for a boring bit... Kaikoura is a small peninsula that sticks out into the Pacific, close inland are 2000+ m peaks and not very far offshore is a deep ocean trench. The mixing of the sea currents in this area produces lots of food and means there is potentially lots of marine life to see. In the morning we drove to the sea fro...

The travelling lifestyle affords a few luxuries, things we'd take for granted in day to day like... a full night of sleep, an occasional cold beer, a shower or a good meal. It's easy most of the time to be very happy just being in these amazing places seeing and experiencing new things but very occasionally, when its cold/dark/raining and you're sleep deprived/living off tinned food/itchy from sandfly bites/not had a shower for 5 days then it's easy to fantasise ...

After 2 nights in Queenstown we headed north and west (or northwest if you prefer). Firstly we climbed a steep switchback road and avoided cyclists doing the same thing as we crossed the Crown Range north of Queenstown on the way to Wanaka. This was a pleasant enough place but there wasn't much to see or do and there were plenty of camera-wielding Japanese tourists so we carried on. The road was gradually climbing and we came across a busy car park by a DoC sign ...