So we crossed the high seas and made it to the North Island. To start us off, we caught up with Ant´s Uncle Nick in Wellington. Katy was slightly freaked out by how similar one of Nick´s kids is to Anthony. Literally a mini Ant - dimples and all.

Next was a drive along the Whanganui River Road - famous for two things - beautiful scenery and scary Mongrel Mob gangs. Luckily the mob turned out to be rather helpful when we got stuck in a ditch to avoid some stupid Chinese tourists who had stopped in the middle of the road to get snappy with their Nikons. The Chinese scarpered but luckily the mob came to our rescue. Another black mark against the van for not being the "all wheel drive" that it is supposed to be.

Then we were onto Mount Taranaki - a spectacular volcano over on the west coast by New Plymouth. It´s the perfect cone shape and looks a bit like Mount Fuji. In fact it became Mount Fuji when "The Last Samurai" was filmed there. Pity Tom Cruise didn´t stick around afterwards. So we could hurl him into the crater of course. Poor old Katie.

We´d read that it was a tough climb having claimed about 200 lives over the years (unfortunately not Tom´s). Well it was certainly tough and not helped by us being kept up the previous night by the local mob doing donuts in the camp car park the night before. But it was worth it as it´s definitely a highlight of our trip so far.