We arrived in New Zealand and Auckland airport after a good 3 hour flight from Sydney and had the smoothest immigration, customs and luggage experience ever! We then headed to Jucy to pick up our hire car and after sorting all the paperwork, getting the ski rack on the roof and collecting the hundreds of free maps, we headed across Auckland to North Shore and Takapuna, where we stayed with Paul for a couple of days.

We spent the first day on errands - money exchange, furniture shopping for Paul and bedding, pots and pans etc for us and then we spent a lovely afternoon in Auckland. It is a really quiet town and even on a Saturday it wasn't busy at all - we went to the harbour and wharf and the sky tower, did some shopping and then headed to the cinema to see 'The Lovely Bones' and then had a delicious Italian.

The next day we headed up north and stayed in Paihia which is a lovely seaside resort. We had a very long journey to the most northern tip of New Zealand and Cape Reinga, which is where the Maori's believe is where the spirits of the dead leave for their journey to Hawaiki. The roots of an old Pohutukawa tree at the tip of the cape is said to be the departure point for these spirits. This is also where the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean meet.

On the way up to the Cape, we went sandboarding at the Te Paki reserve sand dunes which was great fun although there was either an easy slope or one called Psycho so you can guess that was the hard one! I needed a middle ground but there wasn't one! Max undertook the psycho and after the HUGE climb up the dune (which is the hardest part) he came shooting down at a very high speed - everyone was very impressed :o) Unfortunately, the film didn't come out well as he came straight for me and I had to jump out of the way!!

After our journey up north we headed South West to the Coromandel Peninsula and a stay in the lovely town of Whangamata (pronounced Phong-a-mat-ar)which is a surf town and after booking in at the B&B, we headed to the beach and Max had his first Kiwi surf and I had a laze on the beach. The weather has been great since we arrived in NZ.

From Whangamata, we headed North up the coast on the windy coastal roads, stopping in Whapoura beach which was just lovely. A local called Peter gave us directions to a secluded beach called New Chums which involved walking over beach, rocks, boulders, rainforest and 30 mins later we were on a lovely beach. He even lent us reef shoes to make the walk easier! We then drove down to Hot Water Beach where we had great fun digging our own thermal spa in the sand. The water was surprisingly hot and boiling in some parts with bubbles! We then returned to Whangamata, unfortunately, no waves so we had a nice dinner at the B&B and had an early night as we drove for hours today!

From Whangamata we headed inland to Karangahake Gorge which was lovely. We took a short 3 km loop walk along the gorge and took in the beautiful views made all the more better by gorgeous weather. From the gorge we headed to Te Ahora where we stayed the night and experienced our fist Kiwi rain storm which nearly flooded the entire holiday park! From Te Ahora, we drove to Raglan and its famous surf beaches but unfortunately, the waves were just too big to surf and the weather was a bit rubbish so we took a 70km gravel coastal road which took us HOURS to drive down to Waitomo. I lost my stomach somewhere at kilometre 15 so the journey was a little difficult :o)

Waitomo is famous for its underground caves which have been millions of years in the making, formed by underground streams carving out apertures through the limestone rock. Max embarked on an activity morning of caving including tubing, abseiling, flying fox and rock climbing (although it wasn't difficult enough for him) and I had a more sedate above ground experience going horse trekking on a beautiful 680 acre farm on a very lovely horse called Holly - she was super well behaved which was lucky for me! I even held a blue tongued lizard - felt very strange and super dry!

At Waitomo, we stayed in a bed and breakfast on an ostrich farm which was interesting! We woke up each morning to see them peering in through the window. We even had a stroke of Victoria, the only tame one and had an ostrich egg omelette - one egg does enough for two huge portions!! It is interesting that the ostrich brain is smaller than it's eye and they only know how to eat, fight and mate!