Hello! Have been in New Zealand a week now and absolutely love it. The people, the scenery, the cafes, cakes, activities, hostels...infact everything are all marv! We are now in Wellington, the capital city and it seems like there is a fair old bit to do here. First i'll give you a quick catch up of the places we've stopped at along the way so far...

Auckland - I really loved the feel of the city and everything was made even more lovely jubly by being joined by Wennie. Sara spend the first day with her God mummy, so after much chilling out and slopping about waiting for Wennie and Jon's bags to arrive (both of which were lost) we went on a shopping expedition and late afternoon, ended up on the harbour front sat outside at a bar enjoying the hot evening sun and people watching, as well as catching up on 3.5 months lost chatter!

The following day, Jon and Sara left for Rotarua but myself and Wennie weren't organised enough to book it up. We got up at the crack of dawn in the hope that there would be room on the bus anyway but ended up having to have an extra night in Auckland. As we were up and about early, we decided to take the ferry across to Waiheke Island. The weather was a bit drizzly but sun came out in the afternoon and after lunch in a quaint kiwi cafe we lay on a grassy bank for an afternoon snooze!

Following morning we booked onto the bus and cruised on down to Rotarua, via Waitomo where we stopped to do black water rafting! Now, if you're anything like me, you'll picture a massive raft (like white water but just in a massive cave) but no! We were basically caving with a rubber ring and had to do things like jump backwards off a waterfall, climb through a tunnel, join up in a line with rest of the group and slide down a practically vertical slide!! It was amazing though. Lighting our way were thousands of glow worms. When we joined rubber rings and the instructor was pulling us along, we turned off our head lamps and the wormies looked beautiful.

Rotarua - We arrived in Rotarua to the beautiful smell of sulphur. This is the place where there are many geo-thermal activity outlets which give off a very eggy smell! Wennie and i tried to guess where Jon and Sara would be staying but we were wrong so caught up on the bus the following morning, heading down to Taupo. On the way we stopped at some more geo thermal sites. Including one mini volcano which spurts out lots of water at 10.15 every morning. The scenery here is just fascinating!

...to be continued!