Driving up to the Bay of Islands was quite spectacular except for the torrential rain! Luckily though, five minutes before we arrived the sun broke through the clouds for the first time! Once we'd checked in to the hostel we walked around the very small town of Paihia which was beautiful and nice and quiet. After shopping for food we headed back to cook Tacos (a nice change from rice and pasta!!) and then had an evening stroll along the beach. The next day we he...

Having spent most of the afternoon on a bus we finally arrived in Rotorua in the evening and went in search of the lake and some tea! Our first full day in Rotorua began with an early morning trip to Waiotapu (pictured!) to visit the Thermal Wonderland! Rotorua is the most geothermally active area in New Zealand, and is blessed with many a volcano and exlpoding geyser! To begin with we went to look at the hot mud pools (the largest in New Zealand) and then it wa...

We had great fun when we arrived at Auckland airport! Not only did we have to queue for nearly 2 hours at passport control we then went through customs, and because we had walking boots with us we had to get them out! Now this may not seem like anything too difficult but when they've been lost in the bottom of your backpack for nearly a month its a pain having to unpack in the middle of the airport (though they did clean them for us so I guess we can't complain t...

Sydney Part Two... This time we weren't so lucky with the bus journey! We had a smaller coach (with a grumpy driver) and NO LEG ROOM!!! The bus was also full and very noisy and we hardly got any sleep all night. Therefore when we arrived back in Sydney we had 'bus-lag'!! This time we also had to wait 3 hours for our room to become free and so Debs slept on the sofa (again, as she still wasn't well!!) whilst I enjoyed watching the whole of Liverpool vs. AC Milan ...

My joy over not having to take any more long bus journey's soon faded as we found ourselves on a 13 hour bus journey to Melbourne! However, it wasn't too bad! We did actually manage to sleep and they even had enough leg room for Daves long legs (I however being a "shorty", as Dave calls me, have no trouble with this whatsoever!). We arrived early Sunday morning at the bus station and after eventually navigating our way around the trams (we got on the wr...