Had to chuck this little one in just to make my tracking map make sense - oops!!

Spent most of Thursday (6th) travelling back up to Auckland with nakedbus and after a cheapy dominoes in the evening with Natalie we headed to bed early aiming for an early night. It didnt quite go to plan as the other girls had gone out on the Thursday frenzi bar crawl and needed a little bit of looking after when they came in but it was quite entertaining I suppose! On friday Natalie and I got the ferry over to Waiheke island and had a very peaceful tour with ...

Arrived in Rotorua today, a town known for it's strong sulphur smell (similar to iceland for those that have been), giving it nicknames such as 'Rotten-rua'. It's home to a lot of geothermal activity so as soon as you pull in you come across a lot of hot springs and geysers. A lot of people booked on to see hobbiton this afternoon (the LOTR set) so I decided to go with a few others from the bus to the luging site - driving your own gravity powered cart and racing...

It's rare for me to post 2 blog entries in one day but today is an exception! I finally managed to do something I've wanted to since reading marks blogs 3 years ago. Waitomo (wai meaning water, tomo meaning cave) is home to just that - underground caves which you can drift through on rubber rings in the water. Amazing! I did the 'labyrinth' pass which is a 3 hour trip through the caves. Although pitch black and a teensy bit claustrophobic it was so worth it! Most...

Yesterday morning we got the bus early and headed straight to the kiwi experience office with a bus full of people (thankfully!) to sort out any last minute changes. It was here I met 6 girls who were planning on making their way back to Auckland in a few days time to see the All Blacks vs France game on Saturday, and I was tempted to do the same so booked my buses to match, knowing we could get cheapy tickets from nomads hostel. Our first stop was Tairua for a...