We caught the bus up to Auckland from Waitomo, getting to do quite a lot of sightseeing of the city on the way as we were stuck in a traffic jam for ages on the way in to town. We stayed at the YHA here which isn't particularly nice and is at the top of a very very steep hill (it doesn't mention anything about that on their website!!). So after struggling with heavy bags up to the hostel we didn't do much that evening. Our first day here we went shopping for all ...

We arrived at Waitomo early and couldnt check into our hotel for 3-4 hours. So we dropped off our bags and went to have a look around town. This took us about 10 minutes (Waitomo survives as a town solely because of the caves and the gloworms, so there isn't much to look at!) so we had a look around the Cave Museum and then decided to take a trip through the Gloworm Grotto. We joined our guide and group and set off. We had a good look at stalagtites and stalagmit...

Our first day in Rotorua we went on a trip to the Hobbiton Movie Set, the only remaining piece of set from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We had a nice sunny day for our visit and got to explore lots of the farming countryside featured in the film although you wouldn't recognise it unless you were prompted quite a bit! The remains of the Hobbiton village though is still quite good, you can explore inside Bag End and see all the hobbit holes in the hillside. Un...

The first thing we did when we arrived at Taupo was book ourselves in for a skydive, something we'd both been looking forward to for ages! We booked ourselves in for the next day and retired to our room wondering whether we were doing the right thing!We had a morning dive and were pleased to wake up with the sun shining, a perfect clear sky so we had awesome views as we hurtled towards the ground. We were picked up in a limo and driven to the dive site. We wa...

We left Kaikoura by bus to get to Picton, where we were to take the Interislander Ferry across the Cook Straight to Wellington and the North Island. Sad to be leaving the South Island, we looked forward to the joys of the North! We had booked to stay at the Wellington YHA, apparently one of the best hostels in the world. It was nice, but we cant say the same for Wellington. We didnt really like it, though the be fair it did rain for the majority of the time w...