Last Saturday Chris & I hired a car & did a road trip around the east coast of the North Island. We started in Auckland & drove about 6 hours to a place called Whakatane, a small town iwth a couple of pubs in it. It was a Saturday night but the place was dead so we just had a few drinks & chilled with a few crazy New Zealand couples.

The next day I drove a scenic route up the North East coast for about 6 hours & 420km until we came to Gisborne. There was about 3 towns we passed through on 6 hour journey & 1 of them had absolutely nothing in it, the shop windows were smashed in. Gisborne again was a small town with b***** all in it. We just chilled in the hostel, had a few beers & watched the rugby sevens on tv.

The next day Monday was to prove a very interesting day indeed. We left Gisborne at about 8am on a journey to Rotorua. We had initially planned on going to Napier but we changed our minds at the last minute. The first 2 hours of the journey was fine, a nice scenic road all the way to a town called Frasetown. Again this was a small town with nothing in it, New Zeaand as a lot of these towns, too many really. After about 3 hours of travelling the roads began to get worse, they were basically gravel roads now & you could barely fit 2 cars on them. The map never mentioned gravel roads, typical. Well we travelling now through a National Park with no phone covergae, we were basically in the middle of nowhere. And our luck was about to change, Chris was driving, the English geyser, we drove around a blind corner, going slow & all of sudden a 4x4 comes out of no where & smack. It basically took up the whole of the road & we had no wehwre to go but into the 4x4 or over a cliff. So we had just been involved in a car crash in the middle of nowhere with no coverage, I had to double back an hour to the nearest phone & get a tow truck. This took 3.5 hours to come & by the time 5pm came & no sign of a tow truck we were getting well worried. Sleeping in the car in a National Park was becoming a possiblity. Luckly 10 mins later the tow truck arrived, we were very lucky as he said he was going to turn back if he hadnt found us in the next 10 mins. So our road adventure was over, it took 2.5 hours to get back to Rotorua. We stayed there 2 days, smelliest city I've been in, smells of rotten eggs, because of the sulpher in the air.

We then headed to Taupo for a day & finally back to Auckland where we have been for the past 3 days, its getting boring now, Auckland night life is pretty crap, most nights the place is dead!.....& now Im off to Chicago..should be fun!!