After an awesome time in Taupo, we departed around 7.30am for our short hop up to Rotorua, arriving shortly after 10am. Rotorua is a place famous for two things, its Maori culture and its smell. The area in which Rotorua is situated is a hotbed of geothermal activity and as such, the large quantity of sulphur in the air provided the place with a somewhat eggy smell, which luckily for some provided the opportunity to break wind at will without any suspicious loo...

On the morning of April 15th, after our final night in Queenstown, we gingerly walked out of the Nomads Hostel at 7am to catch our Kiwi bus to Christchurch. Despite out ticket taking us to Wellington with an overnight stop back in Kaikoura, the ferry crossing to the north island would have cost us just less than a flight, so we decided to take the plane from Christchurch to Wellington in order to give ourselves an extra day in the north island. Soon after leaving...

On arrival to Queenstown, we checked into Nomads Hostel, our home for the next six nights. Soon after arriving, we bumped into one of Dave's uni mates, Ben Laycock and together our attentions soon turned to the evening's entertainment. Following a quick explore of the town, we found an off-license where we were able to stock up on the cheapest drink of the region, three litre boxes of Vodkat Juice Mix, before heading back to the hostel for a few drinking games. '...

Having successfully queue jumped onto the first Kiwi bus out of Nelson, our destination for the next day was the uninspiring coastal town of Westport. En route we stopped for lunch at the impressive Lake Rotoiti. It was here that we were encouraged to ignore the pleasant lawn areas around the lake, along with the agreeable temperatures associated with dry land, and take a running jump off the pier into the freezing water. The purpose of such as jump appeared to b...

The third leg of our trip was here as we traded in Wallabies for Kiwis. We arrived in Christchurch following a short flight from Sydney feeling a little tired, having not made it to bed the previous night. It was immediately obvious that this was a place still suffering from the devastation of the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that had struck just 5 weeks prior to our arrival. The earthquake claimed the lives of 181 people, forced over 10,000 homes to be demolished ...