We arrived in Auckland at about 4pm after a bit of a drive and Becky having a small heart attack thinking we were going to run out of petrol on NZ's only real motorway (which is a bit of a monster considering their other 'highways' are like country lanes). We decided that we'd go to Kelly Tarlton's Arctic Adventure, which is heralded in all of the guide books as a huge aquarium/arctic penguin sanctuary. It was ok I suppose, especially if you're 6 and want to pl...

We arrived back in Taupo on Friday afternoon, determined (ish for Becky) to do a skydive. Went back to Tiki Lodge (cos it's great), booked ourselves in to jump at 9am the next day and went to Woolies to purchase much chicken and pink winage (in a bottle, goon hasn't caught on over here..give it time). However, the bottle was a screw-top, so don't think we splashed out fellow backpackers. We were sharing a room with a Japanese girl who never spoke and two Engli...

We arrived in Matamata and were quickly transported by our guide Tina to Hobbiton, the set for the Shire in Lord Of The Rings. We thought we were going to go in the Hobbiton bus, but ended up in the more hobbit-sized minivan cos our tour group was only small. The film set is actually on a huge farm just outside Matamata, there was seriously about 12,000 sheep there just roaming round the hobbit holes. Most of the set has been demolished, but there are sti...

The drive up from Wellington was fairly uneventful...we saw lots of sheep, lots of hills, lots of cows, 1 pig and a mountain. Lovely! New Zealand is really picturesque actually, very green and mountainous. Anyway, we had been driving for about 4 hours when the sun set, but we still had another 2 hours to go before we reached Waitomo. Night driving is not usually a problem, but when there is no road lights, and the road twists and turns round random hills and m...

We arrived in Wellington early evening on Tuesday and battled our way through rush hour traffic to our hostel. The very helpful girl in reception waved her arms a bit and said "you can park somewhere around here"...took us an hour to find 'somewhere'. We finished off our chicken butties from the trip down and went downstairs for A drink...literally. The bar actually had a real barman i.e. he was large and round and not Swedish. Being generally sad, we had...