Caught the 1pm Blue Bridge ferry to South Island. The forecast had been for gales in the morning, but we had a lovely smooth crossing in the sunshine. The staff were very friendly and chatty on the boat; we got free hot chocolate as too much had been made and a free paper, which told us that the skin burn time was 9 minutes! It was only the day before that Andy had finished reading the guidebook on South Island and drawn everything out on the map, and it was onl...

Rained heavily during the night and the front of the van leaked; lovely large big puddle between the front seats. That, coupled with the grey water problem we'd encountered for several days, where the water from the sink was pouring straight out of the bottom of the van, rather than going into the water tank, meant we'd decided to call the campervan company and try and get something done about it. We were on our way to the phonebox when Andrea noticed a c...

We managed to get to the Visitor Centre just in time to catch the 10am Art Deco walking tour of Napier. Napier was destroyed by earthquake and subsequent fire in 1931, with quite a number of people being killed. The earthquake measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and lasted for two minutes (imagine the ground beneath you shaking for two minutes!). It also made the land rise up and Napier found itself to be 40sqkm bigger afterwards. Following the disaster, the town w...

Today we left Turangi (alive!) and headed for Napier. To get there we had to drive back up the side of Lake Taupo to the town of Taupo. In the supermarket in Taupo there a sign on the aisle that said "Manchester". This pleased Andrea, but we couldn't work out why it was there or what products it related to... After the shopping we thought we'd take in one final thermal area; the Craters of the Moon north of Taupo. This thermal area appeared as a...

Today we walked the Tongariro Crossing, which has been described as the greatest one day walk in all of New Zealand. We had thought about doing a scenic flight over the volcanoes, but funds and the need to burn off calories from eating too much chocolate and ice-cream pushed us towards doing the hike. The Crossing is in Tongariro National Park, New Zealand's first national park, and comprises three volcanoes; Mount Tonaririo, Mount Ngauruhoe and Mount Ruapehu...