Back in Auckland we met up with Dave, a friend of Sharon's from back home. Dave did us proud, taking us round all the sites of Auckland that we had missed the first time round (being hungover!) Mount Eden provided amazing views of the city and Kim was tempted to roll down the grassy crater until Dave warned that it was fragile and she could fall through the crust into hot magma bubbling beneath the surface....best not then!! Thanks Dave for a great day out!

We spent our last couple of days touring Northland. We visited the largest Kauri tree in New Zealand, Tane Mahuta, which is 2000 years old, 17 meters tall and has a trunk 13 meters thick...that's one big tree! The Japanese were going mad taking photos!!! We also strolled around the Waitangi Treaty Grounds where the Maori and the British signed a historic treaty recognising New Zealand as an independent nation and a protectorate of the UK. We also made the mis...

We spent a couple of days driving round the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula along the windy coast road. No major highlights to report...unless you'd like us to tell you all about the town covered in murals and scattered with boulders engraved with Haiku poetry? Or we could wax lyrical about the massive open gold mine (Martha's mine) that we visited? Or we could report on the fact Mark drank a bottle of New Zealands' speciality 'lemon & paeroa' drink standing...

The whole purpose of our trek across country to Whakatane was purely to visit White Island, New Zealands' only active marine volcano. We held our fingers, toes and everything else crossed for good weather and for once our hopes paid off and we had a beautiful sunny day. The trip over to White Island took about 90 minutes by boat, accompanied some of the way by leaping Common Dolphins (adults and babies!). Once at the island we were issued with helmets and gas ma...

We drove to Waitomo purely to see the famous glow worm caves. We booked in for an adventurous 4 hours of caving, tubing and swimming through glow worm (and eel) infested caves. The trip was fantastic - we squeezed through small gaps, floated in darkness watching the amazing glow worms, jumped off a ledge into the water and swam in freezing water clinging to a rope with only the glow of our head torch! It was really good fun although very tiring!! Typically Kim ma...