For those of you taking note, I have skipped a little bit of New Zealand. You may have noticed that blogging has fallen behind (I'm writing about September in February) so the way I see it is that NZ isn't going to get less fresh in my mind. So I'm now jumping to October and across the Tasmin Sea to our time in Australia. I'll finish New Zealand off when I'm home, bored, unemployed and carless! Aka next week! Up until now our Round the World tickets had worked...

Driving across the New Zealand country side always offered some spectacular views and the drive back from Waitomo to Taupo was no different. The vibrant green hills were framed by blue skys and dramatic clouds, often bursting to create huge rainbows. It was like Wales on drugs! Back in Taupo we continued to stay on Reid's farm, the weather looked better and the foecast for tomorrow was bright. We awoke to clear skies but after last time we didn't get our hope...

Kiwi Cave Rafting, offered a combination of climbing, abseiling and black water rafting as well as showing us the famous Waittomo glow worms. We were the only two on our tour so we had the two guides to ourselves. We kitted up in wetsuits and fetching pink over trousers, slipped into our harnesses and were shown how to use some of the caving gear. The rain had caused problems so as I abseiled down into the dark abyss the river that met me was waist deep rather...

We arrived in Taupo mid-afternoon in familiar (British) weather. It was cold, windy and wet so first job was to find somewhere to spend the night. We dropped into the local i-Site (tourist info) which would become a regular start to a new town in NZ. They told us about a local Freedom campsite, Reid's Farm which was only 2 minutes out of town. Before heading off to find the site we pulled into the Library to steal some of their free WiFi to call home. Taupo i...

Having the car for the past week had cemented the idea of seeing the rest of New Zealand with our own wheels. Now back in Auckland City it was time to swap our car for a camper. I had increased the limit on my credit card to allow it to cover the $3000 bond. $3000 seemed like a lot of money to risk but the option of paying for insurance doubled the cost of renting the van so we took the risk. Being returning customers (after the car) we managed to blag a 10% di...