It's been a while since the last blog, mainly due to celebrating Christmas and the eating and drinking associated with it. Christmas Day was spent in Taupo and, although it was hard being away from home, we both had a brilliant day. The hostel, Taupo Urban Retreat, put on a great Christmas dinner for everyone and we had masses of drink along with party games. Beth decided to FaceTime quite a few people late at night on Christmas Day and for that I can only apo...

On our last day in Rotorua we went for a walk through Redwood forest which has several trails you can do. It took us about and hour and a half to get there so we decided to do the hour long walk before we trekked back to the hostel. Beth decided she knew a shortcut back to the hostel but she didn't. This meant that it took about two hours to get back to the hostel through what looked like Texas Chainsaw Massacre country. We made it back anyway. On Sunday nig...

We left Waitomo at 9.30am on Friday morning and arrived in Rotorua at around 1.30pm. We hadn't booked any activities in Rotorua for the Friday afternoon so after checking in and getting settled in our 8 bed dorm we headed out for a look around town. We weren't sure what to expect as we had heard that Rotorua stunk due to the geothermal activity in the area which releases sulphur but we were more than pleasantly surprised. It always helps when the sun is shinin...

We arrived in Auckland on Tuesday having time travelled from Sunday night even though our flight from Santiago was only 13 hours. The flight was really good and was operated by the Chilean airline, LAN. It was much better than the BA flight we had previously had and a much larger selection of films of which I watched 4 and Beth kept up her reputation by sleeping most of the way! We landed at 4.30am and managed to get through customs within the hour. As it was...

It was on early start on Thursday from Hot Water Beach with the bus leaving at 7.30am for Waitomo. We jumped on the bus and stopped in a small town just past Hamilton to stock up on some supplies for the day ahead. Whilst there I got talking to an old New Zealand couple who recognised my Geordie accent because of Robson Green's fishing show! After the supermarket stop we drove for another 5 minutes before we all jumped off the bus for a small walk around an ol...