we'd been given until 1pm to drop the van off in auckland, washed and cleaned before we would be charged a tenner per hour. we got there just befopre one so it was a little after by teh time we'd run her through teh car wash. the map we'd been given for the depot was pretty much non existent and we had no idea where we were going. its a bigish city i would say by world standards but massive in NZ standards. more than 1/3 of the entire population live here so its ...

after we left rotorua we headed north again to the coromandel peninsular where hot water beach is. basically, two hours either side of low tide you can hire a spade from teh local shop, go off down teh beach, dig yoursdelf a hole and the thermal water bubbles up and makes a nice hot bath for you to sit in. its a pretty popular spot so there are several groups of people shovelling away looking for the best spot...too close the the seem and its so hot you cant get ...

Rotorua stinks, its a realtivley big city (NZ relativity) and is right on teh thermal area and just stinks of sulphur. and you dont really get used to it either. anway...stayed in a hostel for one night when we got there as we were all a bit fed upand couldnt bebothered loking for somewhere to camp. attemptede to go out but the one bar we found thaty had been reccomendde was well, horrific. a wierd mixture of backpackers and locals. made you feel wierd just bein...

drove upto taupo which is well on the tourist mapand found another lake. the biggest in NZ, sicne we'd all done a skydive and were ever running out of time we didint really stop to investigate.later we've learned there is much more to see here but its mainly summer things anyway.we pretty much got a pizza hut and took a picture of the mc'plane and then drove on. we did find a thermal area on the way out so stopped to look at eh bubbling mud pools and steaming sul...

slept at the tongariro national park village last nigth which turned out to be practically someones drive this moring. anyway, there are three volcanoes in this area and is the area used for mordor iin LOTR (sorry, im not touring NZ on a LOTR pilgrimage, it just so happens they used all these places). one of them really does look like mt doom though. anway, turns out we could only get a ground level view for now as the cable car doesnt open until saturday and bot...