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 mistake of getting the pedometer out for the first time and realised that its actually pretty hard to do the recommended 10,000 steps a day...even when doing 1km walks around waterfalls and up hills!

We spent one night in Northland in a converted primary school, still with blackboards and coatpegs intact. We were the only guests and randomly an American bloke called Bud dropped in to see if we wanted a talk about astronomy. As we were the only ones there we felt obliged but it turned out to be pretty interesting looking at the stars in the Southern Hemisphere and spotting the famous Southern Cross constellation for the first time. Discussion did get pretty deep on quantum physics and black holes but we think that we did a pretty good job of looking intellectual and not saying anything too daft...!