Got back to Auckland this morning,dropping off the camper a bit late as we'd driven to the airport to put our bags in left luggage. Spent the day in Auckland booking accomodation for Fiji and excitedly posting a wierd plastic thing to Ed, as we finally found something that fits the criteria! (NB.Ed set us a challenge whereby we had to find and post something made of plastic which would be difficult to guess the use of. He will then open a debate in Vox as...

Drove north again to Rotorua, nicknamed 'sulphur city' asithas the most energetic thermal activity in NZ. It stunk! We only had a few hours so didn't do much,apart from take a pedal boat onto the lake! We were stopped by police on the first day we had the van - our lights at the back weren't working, so we can't drive at night, it gets dark about 5.30pm so we're having to rush even more now.

Like many places in NZ, Taupo has thermal areas; just outside the town centre is Craters of the Moon,which is basically lots of craters which are full of boiling, bubbling mud and surrounded by ground which is literally steaming. It had just rained so there was lots of huge billows of white vapour mysteriously rising from the earth. It looked like something from Doctor Who..... and itsmelt of sulphur, which was horrid. The boiling mud and steam was quite unnervin...

Drove through Hamilton and on down to Taupo today, through more rain and some gorgeous forests.

Drove south on the scenic route through the Waipoua Kauri Forest, which suprisingly enough is full of Kauri trees. They are huge, magnificent things, and the drive was lovely, the road winding its way through what is left of these great trees,that were such a source of wealth in the 19th century. Here there is also the largest tree in NZ,called Tane Mahuta and standing at 51 metres. The weather had brightened up by now and so we kept stopping to take photos...