For once I was actually organised and ready before the taxi arrived - imagine that? Expecting the traffic to be bad one booked the taxi for 5, but even the traffic was ok and I arrived at the airport not long after 6.30 I was flying with China Southern again, mainly because they have a generous luggage allowance - 3 x 23kg. However the art of getting 3 suitcases to weight exactly 23kg was going to be a challenge. While I'd got the total weight pretty spot on,...

Last day today, need to leave for the airport around 4pm. Spent the morning packing & copying the 1000s of photos of lakes/mountains/beaches etc from camera memory card - laptop - hard drive etc. Didn't get time to upload phone pics from the last few days to this site - will have to do it when am back. We went out around lunchtime to the supermarket to stock up on hokey pokey (NZ's famous chocolate in case you're wondering) and then went for a walk near the ...

Our motel was opposite a service station so despite packing a bag of apples & bananas for breakfast we called into Burger King for breakfast We decided to drive from Turangi to the Tongariro Nation Park, home to Mount Ngauruhoe (aka Mount Doom) Mount Tongariro & Mount Ruapehu - all of which are volcanoes. The views would have been amazing had it not been ridiculously cloudy. We literally could see nothing of the view. Could just see the bushes & scru...

Andy has a day off tomorrow so it's another mini break for us. This time we're off to see beaches, lakes, mountains & volcanoes! We left Hamilton around 2pm driving through trees and farmland towards lake Taupo. Autumn is turn into winter now, not just because it's cold wet & windy, but the leaves have turned from green to red & yellow and are now falling from the trees We also drove through large areas of deforestation - is sad seeing all the tree...

After Andys flight was cancelled (due to the wet & grey weather) we decided to go to Cambridge for some brunch. Cambridge is a small village about 15/20 mins drive away. We'd been told there were some nice cafes there, as well as a fruit & veg shop which was significantly cheaper than the supermarkets (only £1.50 for an avocado instead of £3! 50p for a kg of apples not £2!) So we ate, had a wander round & did some shopping etc The afternoon was sp...