January 24th (2) We arrived in Rotorua late afternoon and checked into our hostel 'Base - Hot Rocks'. The hostel was not nice so we dumped our stuff and made our escape for the evening. We headed out into the 'city' centre (like the size of Hailsham!). It was only about half five but the place was dead. No people around and no shops open. In desperation of finding some real living people we looked for somewhere for dinner. We found an Irish pub called 'Hennesse...

January 22nd We left Whitianga on the bus at 7.45 in the morning. We were heading to Waitomo. We made a short stop at the Karangahape Gorge where they used to mine gold which is quite pretty. We drove through the prime dairy faming area of New Zealand. There were lots and lots and lots of cows! :-) We arrived in Waitomo early afternoon and were dropped at our hostel - the Kiwipacka YHA. After almost dying waiting for the desperately ditzy woman to check us in w...

January 19th Our bus picked us up from the main street to take us out to the Coromandel Peninsula. Our driver was Eric. On our way out of the city the bus took us up to the top of Mount Eden, an extinct volcano, to get a good view of the city. We stopped briefly at a bay in the firth of Thames to take a picture. We went to a supermarket in Thames to get some lunch. We drove throught the town of Tairua which is all posh holiday homes. We couldn't go to Hot Water ...

January 17th We were picked up by the magic bus at 8. We were glad to leave this hostel. We'd had some food stolen from the fridge to add to our annoyance! We stopped in a little village called Rawene on the edge of the Hokianga harbour for mid-morning tea. We were dropped off at the visitor centre in Opononi where we met the lady from our hostel - Globetrekkers. She took our bags up to the hostel and then came back for the four of us. We went into the visitors ...

January 14th Today we had our first journey on the magic bus. We had to be outside a hostel up the road at 7.20 and checked out of our hostel. Our driver was Steve (who looks like a young Graeme Garden from the Goodies with his mutton chops!). We get a little commentary as the driver is going along. We stopped a couple of times along the way for tea and loo stops. Listening to Steve we have our first cultural discovery of New Zealand - that everyone in New Zeala...