"That's going in…" I said. "YES!" shouted Katy, leaping in the air. Ok, right,…we'll come back to that later… One of the most well-known tourist guides over here is the "101 Must-Do Things in New Zealand" and residing at number 95 are the "Hundertwasser Toilets" in the small town of Kawaka. Toilets? Oh well, we thought, maybe they really were something special? "Hundertwasser" translates as "hundr...

After the wedding festivities were over, my priority was to get my tooth fixed. We were given the name of a local dentist - well, to be honest, the only local dentist - whose surgery was in Paihia, a short trip on the ferry. I was dreading the bill more than the repairs themselves, but it wasn't too bad at a bit over £100 and the insurance should take care of most of that. We ended up staying at a camp just outside Paihia for three nights, mainly because the ...

My dad and Jan had picked Pukematu Lodge in Russell for their wedding. They'd fallen in love with the small town after they spent a few hours there on a previous trip to New Zealand. The Valentine's Day wedding was planned as a cosy family affair with just me and Richard because we were travelling around the country, Jan's son Stef and his wife Gemma as they live in New Zealand, and the bride and groom. Richard and I had never been to Russell before so as we le...

The drive north from Wellington was pretty dull, apart from the shopping break at Otaki, because our aim was simply to cover as much ground as possible. Katy's dad was getting married to Jan in Russell on Valentine's Day and we needed to get there a few days beforehand. We broke our journey overnight at Cambridge and then continued on the next day through Auckland to a nice little campsite on the beach at Takapuna. Katy had chosen to stay there because it was he...

It's not often you will find me waxing lyrical about shopping, but the whole purpose of this particular blog entry is to tell you about a useful little town called Otaki which is just full of branded outlet shops. As you may remember, we had become enthused about Icebreaker clothing while we were in the South Island. We nearly splashed the cash again in Wellington when we found a 20% off sale at one store, but I'd discovered that there was an outlet shop just n...