Hi everyone,

Since we last wrote, we've travelled up through Wellington to Auckland, where we're spending the next few days until we fly onto Malaysia.

After a somewhat disappointing stay in Wellington we drove north on Friday towards the Tongariro National Park in the centre of the country.Driving in the north island is very different to being in the south - it's hard to believe it's only 50km across the water!There are so many more towns up here and although you do drive through some in the south island, they tend to consist of around 100-500 people with a shop and a petrol station if you're lucky.Up here the towns are all really big and it's much more developed - still undecided as the whether we like this or not!The scenery is different too - while the south is all glacial, making it mostly steep mountain sides with pretty rivers etc etc, the north is volcanic, with fewer more rolling hills, not dissimilar to where Martin lives!

On the way up to the national park we stopped off in a town called Bulls, a rather uninspiring small town on the highway, had it not been for the rather amusing puns they have about town (Indispensi-BULL pharmacy; social-BULL town hall etc etc) all rather childish but amusing just the same!Martin went a bit mad with the photo opportunities, as you will see if they ever upload!!

We reached the town of National Park, within the Tongariro National Park (such original names they have here) early evening and chilled out - there isn't a great deal to do in the town, seeing as its mostly there for the skiers (and its clearly not quite season yet!)

Early the next morning we jumped on our shuttle bus with about 20 other half-awake people and drove the 10km or so down the road to the start of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing walk.It's supposed to be one of the best one day walks in New Zealand and seeing as we haven't been able to do any of the longer, better ones in the south island (lack of camping gear/physical ability on my part) we thought we'd give it a go.The walk was 19.4km (that last .4 really hurt!) and climbs nearly 1000m as it crosses over the mountains between the two dormant volcanoes of Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe.

The walk started off pretty flat for the first hour but the section aptly nicknamed 'the devil's staircase' was a bit of a killer - 500m up in about 45 minutes (basically climbing stairs for 45 minutes) - not too pleasurable! The view from the top was pretty good though! Another bit of welcome flat and then another ascent, this time up the side of Mt Tongariro - all very taxing but worth the effort once we got to the top! Some crazy people decided to make the ascent up to Mt Ngauruhoe summit, another 800m at least!! This is the mountain they used in the aerial shots as Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings - but a 3 hour climb was not for the faint-hearted and certainly not for me when I could see the downhill on our track already!!

On the way down we passed craters, filled with lakes of all different colours due to the strong mineral content from the volcanic rock - since we were in a geothermal area we could also see some of the rocks steaming - all very cool!We descended a little more gently than the original climb, for about 3 hours down through alpine plants on the side of the mountain with good views of Lake Rotoaira and Lake Taupo in the distance, once we came below the clouds.

It was a pretty long walk but we really enjoyed ourselves (wouldn't necessarily do it again anytime soon mind!) Luckily the hostel had a hot tub to soften the blow, which followed by one too many drinks in the evening helped ease the pain a little!

Unfortunately for me I couldn't actually move the next day so our trip up to Lake Taupo was a rather quieter affair!Lake Taupo is the biggest lake in Australasia but in our opinion wasn't nearly as impressive as some of the one's we'd seen in the south - the town was pretty though and we had a bit of a wander round in the afternoon.We drove out to Huka Falls, just out of the town later in the day (once the muscles had recovered) - they might not look much in the pictures but the gorge that the falls travel through is 11m deep and apparently enough water flows off every second to fill 5 Olympic swimming pools! Seeing as it's the only river flowing off Lake Taupo I guess this is somewhat unsurprising! On the way back, we stopped in at a place called the Honey Hive, where they collect and make products with their own honey. We had a tour round the place, seeing the bees in the hives and could read all about how the honey is produced/collected etc. They produce manuka honey here which is supposed to be the best in the world (at $50 a kg you'd hope so!) free tastings weren't too shabby tho!

Today we got up early and headed about 30km further north to a section of the river where we had booked a jet-boating tour.It was only then (10am Monday) that we realised the clocks had gone back an hour on Saturday!! Finally all the odd conversations we'd heard/wondering why restaurants were packed for lunch at half 2 all made sense!! Slightly embarrassed we went for a drive up the road with our spare hour and visited some mud pools near a thermal park.The whole area around Taupo, all the way up to Auckland is dotted with thermal spots but they are most abundant around an area called Rotorua.The mud pools were cool but slightly gross at the same time, and they smelt of rotten egg - nice first thing in the morning!

Once back at the jet boating site we set off for our morning tour of the local area. We took a more scenic trip up the river for around an hour, where we had a really good guide who explained about the local wildlife and Maori culture in the area.We had around an hour off the boat to wander around a thermal area known as Orakei Korako ('the place of adorning' in Maori), which had a mixture of mud pools, caves, geysers and just generally loads of interesting looking thermal-related stuff!

On the boat ride back the guide let loose with the throttle a little more and we had a bit more of a thrill ride with a few spins thrown in for good measure! This afternoon we had planned to stop in the town of Rotorua to see some more of the hot springs areas, but slightly thermal area-ed out we gave it a miss and headed straight to Auckland. (plus the whole of Rotorua smells like rotting egg!)

Checked into a really nice hostel in Auckland just outside the city, planning on going for an explore tomorrow - there's even a mini volcano for us to walk up just outside our bedroom window!!

Looking forward to spending the next three days exploring Auckland and the surrounding area - it seems like there's a lot to do here!

Love Katie and Martin