A Taste of Culture The guidebook highlights of Rotorua are the cultural heritage and the geothermal activity.Having more than spent our budget already we approached this city unsure what we'd be able to do.The weather was cold so we decided just to spend the day there and head to the Coromandel to sleep. On quick inspection of all activities at the I-site we settled on our cheapest yet best value for money option - a living thermal village called 'Whakarewarewa...

Going Deep Underground Lizzy mentioned we had landed safely and unharmed from the skydive and that it was a truly amazing experience but I just thought I would jot down my take on it.I wasn't nervous at all until we reached 15,000 ft and they opened the back door of the plane and we saw people falling out of the back one by one.Then……my turn.We got to the edge of the plane, I tucked my feet under the door opening and then we tipped forward and hurtled toward...

Somewhere over the rainbow… The main focus of our time around Lake Taupo was our planned skydive - this was the one activity we had both been dead-set on before leaving home and we were very, very excited.We had chosen Lake Taupo as the freefall here (like some others in NZ) is 15,000 ft - plus the view of the NZ's largest freshwater lake as you are plummeting to earth also seemed quite appealing.The day before was spent in Taupo wandering around the lake and ...

The Wine, the Cheese and The Yeti Once the ferry had docked at NZ's capital city, Wellington, we headed straight to our first "legal" campsite.It was another race against time as the gates of the park closed at 6pm and having only driven off the ferry gone 16.30 we raced to get there in the van. We made it to the site with about 5 minutes to spare and paid our fees before firing up the stove for our stir-fry.It was so dark at the campsite and really q...

Rise and Shine (recharging our batteries?) Waking up to a bright red sunrise by the sea in Kaikoura made up for the previous evening's car trouble and wonderings of 'would we have been better in a hostel…?'.We tucked into a sausage sandwich while the sun came up and hot-footed it back into the town for some early morning Whale-watching.Once we set sail we were relieved to have taken the advised seasickness tablets as we sped over waves to find the nearest Sp...