Sunday 1st April Touched down at Tahiti airport at 1 a.m. and took a taxi to our hotel, we were tucked up in bed by 2.30 a.m. Linda still woke up early (as she usually does) and we headed for breakfast, to our surprise the restaurant was overflowing as they hold a special "Tahitian" brunch on Sundays, the buffet included oysters (ugh), we just stuck to our usual cereal, fresh fruit and toast. After spending a week in Rarotonga with a consistent breeze blowing it...

Saturday 24th March (again) Kia Orana. After a 4 hour flight from Auckland we arrived into Rarotonga at 04.00 (local time), as we came through customs we were greeted with a garland of flowers. We had arranged an early morning check in at our resort so we were tucked up into bed by 5.30, waking up a few hours later. The weather was quite overcast with heavy showers from time to time and a very strong breeze. Rarotonga is the largest of the Cook Islands and ha...

Friday 16th March Time to pack away the waterproofs and woolly jumpers, we were heading North to the Coromandel Peninsula, where we were assured it would be warmer. Stopped for our breakfast at Rotorua, surprisingly the town didn't smell of rotten eggs anymore. We drove around the lake and then onto the East coast past Tauranga, stopping at Whangamata to stretch our legs with a walk up the beach, hooray, the sand is now a golden colour instead of that horrible...

Thursday 8th March It was still pouring with rain as we headed North, our first stop was to be at Punakaiki to look at a series of limestone rock formations called "Pancake Rocks". Luckily for us it stopped raining for the 30 minutes it took us to walk along the path to this attraction, it is really amazing what nature does to the landscape. Huge waves crashing in over the rocks have created "blowholes" and we were given a good explosive show of the power of t...

Monday 26th February Time to finish "The Southern Scenic Route" which would take us from Invercargill to Te Anau, the sun was shining when we left but we hadn't gone 20km before a huge cloud was hanging over us. By the time we had reached Riverton the wind was gusting. Carrying on to Monkey Island we decided to get out of the car and try to take some pictures of the Southern Atlantic crashing in, we had trouble standing upright. As we headed inland the weather...