So, the plan for Monday was to get up early, drive to Kaiteriteri and catch a water taxi to one of the small bays along the Abel Tasman national park, and do some 'tramping' (NZ style hiking). You can imagine the shock we had when we found we had overslept and it was already 08.30! All the seasoned campers, who bed down before 9pm, and are singing in the showers at 7am, would be well on the way by now. We had a very hasty breakfast, packed up, and set off at high...

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...