OK! Been having a great time here in New Zealand. I arrived in Auckland with no real idea of what I was going to do or what the plan was, but after a day or two, I booked my self on a bus tour thing, one of these hop on hop off things called Stray! And it turned out to be a good choice. I got picked up from my hostel on the 1st day - early doors - and headed to a place called Hahei, pretty poor weather, but it was a good chance to meet people and did mange to stop for few places without getting too soaked. That evening we went to some hot pools and finished the evening with a BBQ. The next day we headed to Raglan - a famous surf town. Again the weather was rubbish, so I decided to stay longer there and give the surfing a better go and luckily, the next day was really good, so I went down the beach with 2 others who also stayed longer and we spent the whole day surfing (badly) which was great fun.

Got on the next bus and left Raglan and that night was to be the cultural stop, with a local Maori tribe but first off we stopped for some black water rafting in Waitomo Caves, home of the glow worms! The caving was pretty mad and included abseiling down through waterfalls, climbing through tiny holes filled with water and then climbing up waterfalls - all underground. The climbing was hard because you wear these white wellington boots and they fill up with water, but really great fun. Leaving there, we reached our tribe!! It was not that cultural, but good fun. The boys had to do the Haka and the girls learnt Poi. I was pretty terrible at the Haka - the YMCA is a lot easier to learn!

The following day was heading to Taupo, but on the way we went through Rotorua, famous for its smell due to geothermal areas and it was smelly! Taupo, home of Lake Taupo and the cheapest place to do sky diving and obviously I did it! I did the 15,000 foot jump which is a free fall of just over 60 seconds and as soon as I had done it, I wanted to do it again. The views coming down were fantastic and everyone was buzzing and it was great to have a clear day for it.

Not far from Taupo is the Tongaririo National Park, where there are active volcanoes and the walk around is one of the best in the world. The walk was pretty hard-core and included some steep steps, but there were some great views. Again we were lucky - because of bad weather, no one could do it for the previous week and a half, but our day was beautiful and it took around 6 hours to complete. I was knackered at the end! Off to Wellington we went and chilled round there for a few days getting ready for the South Island.

I'll write about the South Island later or this would be a longer write up than any of my college essays, but the South is great, bungee jumping, cross-dressing karaoke, and canyoning all happened so I'll let you know. Oh, reckon I'll be home shortly too, so get ready!