From the ferry, we drove through wonderful, sheltered, fertile valleys, lit up in the evening sunshine, with beautifully grown vineyards and orchards stretching off in every direction. On the horizon, in every direction, gently sloping hills, and then.....mountains! Yes, more windy roads to climb in our trusty Beast! By the time we reached our campsite, at Richmond, near Nelson, it was quite late, so we decided to go out for a meal for a change. Driving along we ...

Hello again, thanks for all your messages, it's lovely to hear from you! Backtracking a little here, as we've had no Internet for a couple of days. We set off on Saturday for the long drive to Wellington, up and down more mountains, round more hairpin bends, and through more stretches of roadworks where the roads are being re-surfaced with gravel (lucky we took out the extra insurance that covers windscreens!) There was more evidence of the overnight storms as we...

Today we smelled enough sulphurous gases to last a lifetime (actually not nearly as bad as I thought it might be!) We went to Wai-Otapu, the geothermal wonderland with mesmerising boiling mud pools, steam fumaroles, boiling water in strangely coloured lakes and deadly craters. It really was "awesome". Headed off to Lake Tuapo via the Aratiatia dam, which is opened at various times throughout the day to release enormous volumes of water into New Zealand'...

First stop on our journey southwards towards Rotorua was at the Kauri museum in Matakahoe. Considering that we had only seen Kauri trees for the first time last night, we had a lot to learn! The museum was very well done and had lots of different areas to walk through. There was a large display of Kauri Gum, which looks like amber, and was carved into all sorts of amazing things by the 'gum diggers'. Some of the lumps of gum they found whilst digging weighed over...

Woke up early don't know if it's because we're on the east coast or because I'm still a bit confused about the time zones - we lost a day, but now there's an extra day n the month, so it should average out! Found it's easier if only one of us is trying to move around inside the camper van at one time, not much room and it seems to rock like a boat! But we slept well and after Tony had a run and a swim, we set off for the Bay of Islands further up the coast. Had...