We crossed the date line flying from Fiji to the Cook Islands, so we left Fiji on Saturday 9th June and arrived in Rarotonga on Friday 8th June! On arriving at the airport we thought we'd be good and declare our trainers at immigration because they both had a little bit of mud left over from our waterfall trek in Fiji, plus we were told all they do is dip them in disinfectant and send you on your way. However, our trainers were confiscated and we were told we cou...

Bula!!!Our arrival in Fiji was greatly anticipated because we would be back to the hot weather and our tans desperately needed topping up after 6 weeks in New Zealand. We were greeted at the airport with a welcome song from the locals and a lady holding a sign with our names on it. Before long we were on our transfer from the main island, Vitu Levu, across to our first stop on Mana Island in the Mamanuca Island group. We took all our bags onto this little motor b...

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...