Arrived in Auckland and spent a couple of days doing the touristy sites! Weather wasn't particularly good so went to various museums and art galleries, as well as to the aquarium to see the penguins (of course)! They have a "snowcat ride" where you get into this moving cage and gawp at the penguins from this - i was such a little excitable kid and so had to go on this twice!

I soon decided to move on from Auckland, and so took the Kiwi Experience up to the Bay of Islands and spent a few days here. The weather was much better and so I thought I would give swimming with dophins a go, but unfortunately the dolphins we found had a baby with them and so we weren't allowed to go into the water. However, we did get really close to them by hanging off the side of the boat and pulling faces at them (which apparently they like!), and we also saw some fairy blue penguins, which was brilliant! I also took a day trip up to Cape Reinga which is the most northern point of New Zealand, and involved going up 90 mile beach on the bus, and various other stops. Right at the point you can see where the Tasman sea meets the Pacific Ocean, which was pretty cool, and we also had another go at Sandboarding, but it really didn't match the sandboarding in Peru!

My next stop was Rotorua, which was really quite smelly! There is thermal stuff coming out of drains and popping up from the ground, which was pretty weird! I decided to go white water rafting which was so much fun. It involved several 3/4 metre waterfalls, and then a 7 metre one, which was very scary, but we managed to stay the right way up but just got held under the waterfall for a while. The next day I decided I needed some exercise so went on a mamouth walk around the big redwood forest around Rotorua. After 8 hours of walking I went to the Polynesian spa and sat in the 42 degree pool overlooking Lake Rotorua for 3 hours, which was lovely!

Back in Auckland, I went on a free day trip with Kiwi Experience around the city. This was great as it included a free Auckland Bridge Climb. At the Bungy jump point on the bridge I was very tempted as it was stupidly cheap, but then wimped out! The next day was actually sunny and so I took myself up the Sky Tower which has some pretty impressive views, but got annoyed by all the little kids running around squeeling.