Arrived in Taupo early in the afternoon, and our first sighting was not the lake as we expected but lots of road cones!? The NZ Ironman competition was in full effect, a 4.5km swim, a 180km bike ride followed by a marathon, we would have joined in but we were a little late for the gun! The only strenuous activity for us that day was picking up the phone to book our skydive!

So we woke up on the sunday morning fully expecting to jump out of a plane but it was peeing down with rain, and there was cloud everywhere, naturally it was cancelled when we phoned to confirm. She did say however, if the weather clears and u wanna jump later give us a tinkle. By about 2 ish the cloud had cleared and the sun was shining and Gem was twitching to get it over and done with, she couldn't put up with another restless nights sleep!

We decided against phoning but we ended up driving down there just to show our faces, we ended up being squeezed onto the second load of the day that was jumping in about 15 minutes! Time to sign your life away...and choose the height of your jump, we were the only 2 on our plane jumping from 15000ft, everyone else was jumping at 12000ft.... pussies!

The plane was jam packed with passengers sat on parallel benches running down the plane, it took a scenic flight of 20 minutes to reach the first drop off, and it wasn't long till we had reached the point of no return! It was show time and Gem was up first. The light went green and the shutters opened, Gem and Skoty the Czech shuffled to the edge of the plane and after 3 counts were gone. Meanwhile Chris was making his way to the drop zone too to see Gem disappear from sight.

The freefall lasted a minute and was absolutely amazing!!!!!!! Your brain doesn't really comprehend whats going on as the cameraman whizzes around you making your own little show. We plummeted to earth at 250km/h through to 5,000ft looking over the biggest lake in NZ and some pretty wild scenery including volcanoe's and Mt Doom of Mordor! It's not long before the shute goes up and the rushing of wind past your ears is slowed down considerably. As you sail down in the parachute you are then provided with spectacular views of the town and its surrounds until you touch down.

These guys must be the luckiest people alive geting out of bed to do this everyday and earning cash doing it too?! Chris' Mad German Freddy said '"welcome to my office" at 5,000ft, what a life?!

We didn't stay in Taupo all that long, just long enough to do our jump and look around the lake, and then it was off to Rotorua, where on the way we visited geothermal fields with vast amounts of steam rising evrywhere and also bubbling mud. This north island is just one huge volcano!! The town was really historical although it did really smell of eggs from all the sulphur!

Next up Coromandel, not really much to report, apart from the fact we got a flat tyre 2 days before the van was due back, typical! So Chris had to enlist the help of 2 OAP's from the site next door for the use of their jack!

And now here we are in Auckland, staying with friends we met in Oz; Kurt and Veronica and their 2 children. We've spent a cool few days seeing the sights with them including thermal pools and the skytower over looking the city. We've also had a night out in Takapuna where our hosts live after watching some Super 14 rugby at Eden Park the home of the Auckland Blues. The Blues condemned the Lions, a team from South Africa, to a 41 - 14 defeat putting themselves to the top of the table. We were out until 1am, during a night where we were refused entry even with UK driving licenses!

So we're off to Fiji tomorrow for 3 weeks of island hopping and probably avoiding the scamming of the locals... we'll keep u posted...