Our next stop from Nelson was Lake Mahinapua, which is exactly in the middle of nowhere!! Thought the driver was having a laugh when we pulled up at the pub! Although once inside you could see why the kiwi bus stops there every time, the place is run by an old all black legend called Les Lisle he’s in his 90’s now but still very young at heart, he put on a massive feast for the night and in the evening the bar gets transformed and everyone on the bus ...

Wellington signalled the end of our stay in the North Island and we caught the ferry to the south island very early the morning after the rugby having had 3 hours sleep and nursing very sore heads!! As soon as we got on the ferry we all passed out on the floor and didn’t wake up again till we arrived in Nelson in the South island! On the way to our hostel in Nelson we stopped off to do some wine tasting at a vineyard – not the most ideal thing to be d...

Our next stop after River Valley was Wellington - NZ’s capital, we spend almost a week in Wellington although we didn’t do too much, bit of shopping, a lot of drinking, we visited the Te Papa museum which was quite interesting and all about the history of NZ! On of the highlights of the trip so far happened in Wellington when we got tickets to go and see Great Britain vs. New Zealand in the rugby league tri-nations at the Westpac stadium, for some rea...

From Taupo we moved onto river valley to do some white water rafting, was so much fun and our group was voted the most dangerous and life threatening, apparently we were quite lucky to escape some of the rapids with our lives!! Was a great day doing the rafting and we even got to raft some grade 5 rapids, the trickiest and most dangerous!!

We then moved on to Taupo where we stayed for another few nights, the first thing we did in Taupo was our first ever bungy over lake taupo, was great fun! The next day we were up at 5am and driven out to do the Tongariro crossing, rated as one of the best one day walks in the world! The views were so amazing although it was a long walk, 6 hours of walking up a volcano (Mt doom from lord of the rings!) and then back down the other side again!! Got some amazing pho...