We arrived in Wellington on Tuesday just gone. Spent the Wednesday shopping, i bought a new hoodie to keep me warm hooray. We went on the cable cars up to some gardens and that was about it. The following day we caught the ferry across to the South Island and picked up another car in a place called Picton. Then we drove to a really beautiful town set in a bay called Kaikoura. We stayed here for one night and Becs went on a whale watching trip. I really was...

Hawkes Bay area is on the east coast of the north island. They have the best weather, it's pretty mild and we actually had a little sunshine, yippee. The first stop along the bay was Gisborne. It's the first city in the world that the sun rises in. We headed there to have lamb as Becs hasn't had it before (was a veggie for 15 years). We went to a posh restaurant, got ourselves seated comfortably, looked at the menu and no lamb, oops. We had a very nice din...

Howdy all, The last update was for when we'd first arrived in Taupo. Motivation for staying in Taupo being the sky dive and Tongariro crossing (17km hike across volcanoes, one being Mnt Doom used in Lord of the Rings). The weather was atrocious the whole time we were there which ended up being far longer than we had planed in the hope that it would get better but it didn't. So no sky dive and no hike. The hostel was really nice, lots of entertaining people...

Set off early in the morning for Wai O Tapu which is a geothermal natural area. Basically a national park with lots of smouldering pools, steam and gas billowing from the ground and pretty colours from all the different minerals. We made it there for 10.15 to see a conical shaped rock called the Geysa (Giza) errupt hot water 15 metres in the air. The guy did it by pouring soap powder into it, apparently mother nature needed a helping hand hmmmmm. Afterwards ...

Rotorua aka Sulphur City. This place smells of egg, constantly. It's renound for it's thermal activity and hot bubbling pools. We mozied around for the first day eating pies and drinking tea!! Then we went to the Polynesian Spa. It's set outside, lots of heated pools which are good for aches and pains and your skin. Spent the best part of the afternoon switching between the pools. It was really cold outside which was fab because the pools are so hot y...