Have just finished a busy tour of the South Island encompassing wine tours, a full day glacier walking which was hard work and our poor wee legs sufferred for a few days after! Spent some time in Queenstown where we went on the shotover jet and Max went on a stunt plane!! Visited the Milford Sound where it was raining however, this made the waterfalls more spectacular. Have spent the last week in Christchurch meeting up with Yvonne and Ben, Ali and Julie and A...

Finally finished work and the two of us are off for our proper travels starting with Bay of Islands and the North of the North Island. We headed up to Pahai for a bit of Dolphin swimming and spent the day on a boat cruising around the Bay of Islands hunting for some dolphins. Unfortunatley we didn't come across any dolphins but Nicola did find another hole in a rock to add to the collection! We found out later that there were Orca whales in the area which mean...

Back to Hamilton and its raining and 14 degrees cold!! 2 weeks left of work...

It is a good job that we can laugh at ourselves as the only way to describe these photos is 'high'ly amusing! Yes, we did jump out of a plane from 15,000 feet and we would do it again..... Wore very attractive red jump suits then sat for 20 minutes in the plane strapped more tightly to a man than should be allowed! As we exited the plane a wall of freezing air was pummelled into us and knocked any scream out of our mouths. We fell to the ground at 200km an h...

Rotorua - quite possibly the smelliest place on earth with steam rising from drains and holes in the ground everywhere you look! Sounds good? Don't forget the "evil eggy smells" that come with the steam, yuck, thankfully you can't smell when you're asleep!! Rotorua was pretty amazing though, the ground is heated because of all the thermal activity so when you walk past the vents and lakes you get a blast of warm air (and a blast of egg!!). It also holds some ...