Arriving in Rotorua the first thing Lisa did was blame Ben for making the campervan stink!! But then we reailsed the smell was actually sulphur from the Volcanic activity we were surrounded by, Lisa had to apologise (normally the smell is Ben though!). We had a choice of traditional Maori villages we could visit and we opted for the cheaper version which turned out to be the better option as we were visiting a Maori village which was still lived in and therefor...

Our first stop in the Coromandel Peninsula was Waimo Beach. The weather was OK when we got there, so we had time to wander along the beach, but then the next day, things got worse and the heavy rain drove us further up the peninsula where the forecast was meant to be better. We stopped in Hahei Beach, near to Hot Water Beach. The weather wasn't much better, but the following days forecast was optimistic (we felt like we were beginning to chase the sun). Next morn...

After picking up the campervan the first and most important thing to do was rush to the supermarket and spend a fortune on filling the fridge! New Zealand has a lot more familiar foods than South America so we had great fun buying lots of our favourite food. After overloading the campervan we headed south towards Waitomo where we wanted to visit the Waitomo caves, we didn't want to travel too far on our first day so we stopped over in a place called Raglan on the...

The flight from Santiago in Chile to Auckland in New Zealand was a long uncomfortable 13 hours. After having the comfort of (most but NOT all) South American buses for two and a half months we noticed the reduction in space on the plane and found it difficult to get comfy. We left Santiago at 11pm on Tuesday and arrived in Auckland at 4am on Thursday and felt rather jet lagged and a bit confused with times and dates. We hung around in the airport until 8am waitin...