One morning recently we woke up to this view. What a fantastic way to wake up and look out the van window and see this sight. It' Mt Ruehapoe, an active volcano - yes another one that hasn't erupted for a while. We spent some time circling this mountain before heading over to the East Coast to Napier and Hastings. The north isalnd has so many different aspects to it and every coast has a different view. In Napier we went to the wharf where there was a cruise...

The trip continues to amaze us with the most picturesque scenery and amazing views of mountains, streams and deep gulleys. We are now in Wanganui and Tony and I have just climbed 174 steps up into a tower to get the best view of the Wanganui township. It left us breathless - literally! The scenery was good too. Yesterday morning we woke up to the most spectecular view. We had camped at the vistors centre on Mr Egmont - a volcano that hasn't errupted for 250 ...

We are certainly enjoying our NZ experience. We took a fantastic boat trip in the Bay of Islands and saw the Hole in the Rock, the Cape Brett Lighthouse, Russell (use to be known as the Hell Hole of the Pacific) and the island Urupukapuka where Zane Grey use to live and do his Marlin fishing when not writing his western novels. We stayed on a farm stay (a cheap camping option)....what a farm. Probably the roughest we have ever come across including our Austral...

Well here we are in NZ land of the long white cloud .......and a million whiz bangs. Well guess what....we're now one of them. OUr van is a VW diesel and very comfortable. Now we have sorted out where we are and where we are going all is well. It was a bit hairy and it took us 2 hours to find a caravan park once we had picked up the van. In the end we found one only about 5 klms away from where we started, We spent our second night in a lovely free camp in ...

We crossed the border on Tuesday 18th November and just travelled around to a few places before we needed to be in Warragul where we are leaving the van and car while we are in New Zealand. We ventured into Ned Kelly country both in Glenrowan and also Euroa where Ned and his merry men held up the Bank and they took 2500 pounds. We had a couple of nights in roadside stops along with the trucks as free camping is pretty hard to find. We did however, come across a...