After a nice warm sleep last night with our under-soil heating, we were up and out and about in Rotorua. Many of the places here seem to offer the same thing, with guided tours of either Maori settlements or thermal parks. We found the one place that combined the two: Whakarewarewa Thermal Village. The local Maori had set up their village right next to a geyser and some thermal springs. This is the one thing that confuses me about Rotorua as a whole: why set up a...

This morning we got up early, dismantled our tent and caught the bus back down to Auckland and then onto Rotorua, nearer the centre of the North Island. It was quite a long journey, about 8 hours, with a crazy bus driver on the second coach who seemed to find it near impossible to drive in a straight line even on the motorway!We were quite glad when we reach Rotorua, but then had a pretty long walk out to our campsite…well, it felt a long way with our rucks...

After the long bus journey yesterday, we had a relaxing day around Paihia today.We walked out to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds just on the outskirts of town, and had a look around.This was where an agreement treaty was signed between the Maori people and the British discoverers to share the land of New Zealand under British rule.The grounds had a traditional English house and a Maori house build right next to each other to signify the agreement.It was really intere...

Today we spent our time looking around the top-most part of New Zealand. We signed up for a tour with our flexi-pass bus ticket. The flexi-pass is kind of geared towards backpackers, so imagine our surprise when we boarded the bus to find it full of old people! It was really funny. They all smelt of fragranced sun tan lotion, but were very polite and friendly so it's all good. Our first stop of the day was at at the Puketi Kauri Forest, where the Kauri trees hav...

Hi Everyone, We made it to New Zealand, no thanks to some last minute efforts by BA trying to sabotage the flights! We stopped in LA for a night and then flew down to Auckland the next day. 23 hours flying in 2 days was a bit much, but at least it's over and done with now. Yesterday we spent the morning looking round Mt. Eden where our hostel is. We actually climbed Mt. Eden before we'd even checked in, so we were pretty pleased with ourselves in the afternoon....