We arrived at Rangitukia this afternoon and headed straight out on a horse ride along the beach and up into the hills. My horse was called Apache and was easily the prettiest horse there but he knew it and was a complete tart with the other horses! Was so nice to see the scenery with little effort and was a lot more successful than the only other time I've been on a horse so really enjoyed it. Of course I dropped my new camera while passing it to the guide and ...

I bought an additional ticket to visit the east of the north island as had heard loads of people loving the trip and it was the best decision! Our first stop was in Te Kaha at The O'Briens' family home (as all the english came over here and stole all the women - most Maoris have english/irish/scot surnames - bizarre). The pic for this blog is the garden overlooking the sea and just down the steps where the dog's sitting there's a hot tub which was much appreciat...

We arrived in Taupo last night, met up with the old crowd from our first bus and had an early night because we had to get up 5am the next day to climb a mountain/volvcano (I'm still not entirely sure!). So 5am came and I'm as grouchy as I am at that time in the morning, luckily Charlotte's not the best morning person either so we just got on the bus and crashed out on the way there. Every so often on the way I'd wake up to the bus driver telling us about how to ...

Arrived in Waitomo today - there's nothing around and looks dead but they have all these underground caves.....so we went abseiling, black water rafting and caving! It was a lot of fun but soooo cold! First you abseil 100ft down into the cave and then you zip slide in the pitch black further down into the cave. The whole cave is filled with glow worms (which [boring fact alert!] are actually fly larva burning their crap away - kinda spoils the magic when you kno...

OK - I'm now In Rotorua...journey to get here has been fun. Most of Tues was spent traveling but we stopped off at a couple of great bays - Stingray Bay and Cathedral Cove. The weather wasn't good (pics of me in my Alton Towers mac!) which was a shame but probably a good thing as I wouldn't have wanted to leave the place.....we then had a stop off at Mercury Bay overnight which was film and early night for us all! We then headed into Rotorua, visited a really pr...