Day 42 Whitianga to Russell What a difference a day makes, it's really raining hard today, the sea that yesterday was a deep turquoise and calm is now a charcoal grey and choppy. Hoping desperately that things will improve as we drive north. On the road by 9:15am as we have at least a 6 hour drive ahead of us. The rain stayed with us for a good couple of hours but stopped and it looked brighter when we were about half an hour from Auckland which raised our ...

Day 41 - Hot Water Beach and Coromandel Town A bit of a grey start to the day but as we were breakfasting with a fellow guest from Bern in Switzerland the skies began to clear, so inspite of the 35 min journey and some rather derogatory comments we had heard about the place we headed for Hot Water Beach. The beach itself is a long sandy cove with good surf although swimming is restricted to the area patrolled by the life guards as there are strong rip tides. ...

Day 40 - Mercury Bay, Whitianga, Coromandel Oh my we've been away for 40 days, I can't believe it. Well it's been a pretty active day again today. I managed to badly bruise my little toe yesterday evening when I was having a swim. There was a hidden rock underwater and I managed to kick it! Consequently with Bill's knee playing up after the climb yesterday and my toe giving me gip we decided not to walk too far today so hired a kayak from a dive shop in the town...

Day 39 Rotorua to Whitianga Well what a fab day today has been. First the day dawned bright and sunny again, but we've been caught by that before so I reserved judgement on what the rest of the day would bring weather wise, but it stayed sunny and hot all day - result! On the road by ten to drive to Whitianga but we had been advised to stop enroute at Tauranga and Mount Maunganui as it was a lovely spot: boy are we glad we did. Tauranga is quite a largish t...

Day 38 Rotorua Day dawned beautifully bright and sunny, oh what a joy to pull back the curtains and have the sun streaming in the windows and a blinding reflection over the lake outside. We set off in the car after breakfast to visit Hell's Gate but realised we had misread the directions and ended upon the wrong road so visited Waimangu Volcanic Valley instead; not a bad choice and it was a fantastic walk down the valley created by the eruption of Tarawera in 1...