So we arrived in Wellington after 3 hours on the Picton Ferry and drove the camper off the boat and onto the busiest roads we had encounted in NZ so far, which still weren't really that busy. We navigated our way through the narrow streets and after struggling to find a spot big enough to park in we eventually found a pay and display space on a side street. As we left the camper it started to rain and this stayed pretty constant for the next few days. As we couldn't do very much in the rain we spent most of our time in the Wellington Te Papa museum or walking around the shops. And whilst walking around the shops Ben managed to have a fight with an escalator and actually had his shoe eaten off his foot:-) Funny now but he wasn't impressed at the time.

After a couple of days in Wellington we decided to move on to Napier, which also welcomed us on our first night with plenty of rain. However, we woke up on our first morning to some sunshine and walked around the local farmers market trying the local produce and baked goods:-). We didn't spend long in Napier as we had to get to Lake Taupo for our skydive!!!

We arrived in Lake Taupo the day before we were due to make our 15,000ft jump out of a plane. It was around mid afternoon and the weather was perfect....not a cloud to be seen. We decided that this was just the type of weather we wanted for our skydive so I rang the company to ask if we could jump now instead of waiting till the morning when it might be cloudy. To our surprise they said yes.....we were not ready at all though....Bens face was a picture when I told him to get ready as we were jumping now. Within 10 minutes of making the phone call we were at the airfield and being prepared on our jump. We were put into jump suits and got a bit of time to gather our thoughts whilst we watched the plane before us go up and other people do their skydive. Then it was our turn. We were introduced to our partners who we would be attached to when making our leap of faith, and then taken to a tiny plane where we were loaded in 2 at a time. There was only enough room for about 12 people with us sat side by side in pairs. It took a good 20 minutes for us to make the climb to 15,000 ft and for the last couple of thousand ft we had to wear oxygen masks. I had volunteered myself to go first as I decided I didn't want to watch Ben disappear out of the plane door. My partner tightened up all the straps and made sure everything was secure. The side door was then opened and we began to move towards the edge. Before I had chance to change my mind my feet were dangling over the edge, my partner had turned me around for a quick photo, pulled my head back, and then pushed us out of the plane. We tumbled out and quickly fell away from the belly of the plane. I had no idea which way around we were and could barely comprehend that we were falling....a very strange feeling. We straightened out and I moved my arms out to the side. It was extremely windy and I tried to laugh but got a mouthful of air. A second guy was filming my descent so I looked for him and tried to focus on the camera. After 60 seconds of free fall my partner opened up our parachute and we immediately stopped falling and were dragged upwards. I looked up and Ben was floating from his parachute up above us. We did it!! Crazy! We gradually descended via the parachutes and enjoyed the fabulous views over Lake Taupo. We came into land back where we started and had to extend our legs in front of us to land on our bums:-) Back down on the ground we got unhooked from our parachutes and went to watch our video....amazing:-) What a day!

The following day we made the short drive to Mt Tongariro (Or Mount Doom). We had planned to do one of the walks around Tongariro but when we got to the one we had picked we had to change our plans as the path had been shut due to a recent eruption....scary. We could still see the mountain giving off smoke! We chose a different walk way, which went via a spectacular waterfall, and two large and very blue lakes. The walk took us 6 hours in total and was well worth it but we were extremely tired when we finally made it back to the camper. We then drove back to Taupo and found a motorpark to plug in for the night.