Day 79 - Sun 17th - Auckland Left Mount Maungaui about 8.30am and dropped a load of people off in Thames who were doing the Coromandel trip (this was included in my ticket but I decided to skip it as I didn't have time). Got back to Auckland about 1pm, and I went into productive mode and took advantage of big city facilities such as photo developing and internet cafes. Late in the afternoon I met up with Rosan for a few drinks at the harbour side / viaduct are...

Day 78 - Fri 16th Jan - Napier to Mount Maunganui We left Napier at 8am, and had a one hour lunch break in Rotorua. Miraculasouly we managed to get from Rotorua to Taupa in just over an hour despite the fact that it had taken 8 hours to get there on the way down (see original Rotorua entry for this one). We arrive in Mt Maung about 4pm and it was a really hot day so we were still able to head to the beach. Mt Maung is basically a beach resort there is a small t...

Day 75 - Tues 13th Jan - Blenheim to Wellington Time to say goodbye to the South Island now and head back up north. Got to have another lie before the 11am bus to take me from Blenheim to Picton. From Picton I picked up the ferry to Wellington. Got to Wellington about 5pm, went to the internet cafe for a few hours then off to bed. Day 76 - Weds 14th Jan - Wellington to Napier 7.30am departure from Wellington to get the bus to Napier, via the obligatory a...

Day 73 - Sun 11th Jan - Blenheim, Marlborough Blenheim is in the heart of the Marlborough wine region, home of the NZ Sauvingnon blanc. Not a long journey to Blenheim so I got there about 11am, and headed straight out on a wine tour at 1pm! There were 9 of us in the minibus and we got to influence where we went which was good and unlike a lot of the tours. We went to a couple of the big ones, Wither Hills and Cloudy Bay (twice!), and then two other smaller ones...

Day 71 - Fri 9th Jan -Kaikoura Another 8am bus departure this morning to leave Christchurch for the final time and head to Kaikoura. Kaikoura is famous for two things 1) dolphins 2) whales. The reason we had decided to go to Akaroa to see the dolphins the day before is because they were predicted bad storms to the nexy two days....the two days I was going to be in Kaikoura! The weather wasn't too bad on the way up and I got booked on the swimming with dolphins...