Yes we are coming to the end of our journey around the North Island. We have booked the ferry across the Cook Strait for Sunday. I am praying very hard for calm seas. The first night on the west coast we stayed in a very sweet campsite in a town called Levin. We asked the owner what there was in town to do and she was quite proud to say some shops, a restaurant and a lake to walk along. That has been about it in many of the not so touristy places we have stayed...

Before we left Waitoma we visited the third of the caves. This was a biggy- 5 Kms long and deep. They built an amazing huge spiral ramp that goes around at least 6 times before you reach the floor of the cave. Finally we got to photograph glow worms but with the flash all I got was a very black picture. But I did get some good shots of their bead like webs hanging down from the walls of the cave. Peter at this point was all glow wormed out as he had now heard its...

Before we left Rotorua we visited several more geothermal sites in the 'Volcanic Valley' which stretches from White Island 250 Km across the North Island to the mountains around Tongariro. All the geothermal areas we are visiting sit in this valley formed by the subduction of the Pacific plate under the Australian plate. The Te Puia geothermal site was only a short bus journey out of town so Sid and Peter got a rest. Although that morning he (Peter not Sid) had ...

Before leaving the Coromandel Peninsula we visited Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. Basically some volcanos have underground reservoirs of superheated water which escapes to the surface through fissures. There are two such fissures at Hot Water Beach issuing water as hot as 64 degrees Celsius at a rate of 15 litres per minute. You have to dig a hole which then fills with hot to warm water. Mind you if you are not lucky your hole fills with cold or very, ver...