From Mount Maunganui I had a stopover for one night in Thames - an old Gold mining town. As it was Sunday, there really wasn't much going on but I went for a walk around anyway. I walked along the coast, but it wasn't exactly pretty or exciting. It was really only somewhere that I stopped because I had to, to catch the bus the next day. The next day was the start of my Coromandel connection. Heading out into the Coromandel Peninsula, the first major stop was at...

I have spent the last 3 days in the little surf town of Mount Maunganui. It's a really chilled out place and the weather has been pretty good, so I've been making the most of having a couple of days at the beach, topping up my tan. I did do a bit of exploring though, and on Friday I walked up the Mount that Mount Maunganui gets it name from. It's not exactly a hike, but it was still pretty hard work cos it was quite hot and sunny. They had some bad weather ...

The next day (surprise, surprise) the weather was a bit rubbish. It was raining when I got up, but stopped by about 930-10, just in time for going rocksliding! Rere rockslide is about 50km from Gisborne and is basically a long (ish) flat rock that has water running down it and you can slide down it on a boogie board. I went with Ryan, Tyler and Shaun (one of the guys from Dive Tatapouri). I don't know why I went because i spent half of the time we were there stan...

After a long journey back to Rotorua on Saturday, i ended up going on the luge again, for the third time. This was because a girl i met on my bus was a bit obsessed by it and wanted to go on it again for her third time too. I decided that it would be more fun than sitting around at a hostel that I've already statyed in before, waiting for the next day to come, so I went with her.Sunday morning saw the start of my East Escape tour. It was a much smaller bus (van r...

On leaving Kaikoura, the first stop of the day was at a cafe in Kekerengu. It wasn't much to write home about but the reason I mention it is that it was right on the coast and while we were sitting there, dolphins turned up about 50m out to sea. So that made the annoying half an hour 'tea break' a lot more interesting. Thursday was a lovely day again, which I was glad of because it mean that I actully got to see a bit of Marlborough Sounds as i went across on th...