Hello from Kiwi Land!!!

This is a bit of a delayed blog entry from New Zealand so I will try to cram a bit of everything we have done so far in it. I did try to send one from Auckland however but the computer crashed so its not my fault!

We arrived into (breezy!) New Zealand on the Tuesday 10th so we actually haven't been here too long, it just seems like we have done quite a bit. We flew into Auckland but only spent about half a day here before heading up North to the Bay of Islands for two days. It was lovely here despite the weather being pretty cold! I think we just had it too good in Australia. We stayed in a little town called Paihia which is a fairly small little tourist town as it is the main place people stay in the Bay of Islands.

The views in Paihia were amazing and our hostel was right by the waterfront which was really nice. The landscape of New Zealand is such a contrast to Australia. Its just as I imagined, full of trees and plants and mountains surrounding lakes. I even enjoyed the bus journey up to Paihia as it felt like we were driving through the set of Lord of the Rings!

Whilst in Paihia we went on a boat trip which took us around the other islands and up to a place called the 'Hole in the Rock' which as you can guess is literally a hole in a rock. It seemed to be one of the main attractions anyway and the boat trip was really cool, particularly as we saw loads of dolphins. It was amazing to see and I was pleased as every boat trip I have been on in the past where I have been told I would see dolphins, I haven't! They were so playful and swam right up next to the boat, chasing it along as we sped up.

After our trip to Paihia we came back to Auckland and spent a day exploring the city before heading south down to Rotorua which is where we are now. We were slightly apprehensive at first as everyone kept calling it 'Roto-vegas' but I think that is just as its one of their main tourist towns and they think its 'glitzy'.

Rotorua is famous for its natural thermal springs as the town is built on geo-thermal ground ( a bit of Geography there for you!). Its really amazing to see as just walking through the park there we loads of steaming pools like big lagoons, just like the picture above! We of course had to take advantage of these and so yesterday we visited one of the many spas where you can go in the open thermal pools over-looking Lake Rotorua. It was really nice and we spent quite a few hours here!

Today, we did our first 'mini adrenaline' sport, Luging. This was slightly like Go-Karting and we just basically hurtled ourselves down a mountain on various tracks. It was so much fun!! It took us a while to get used to it at first so we ended up finding the 'easy scenic route' the hardest! I don't think any of us quite got the idea that we had to use the brakes! Once we got the hang of it though we felt like F1 drivers!! (or something like that anyway!)

So, I think that is pretty much everything we have done so far. We are heading down to Wellington tonight ready to get the ferry over to the South Island as we are trying to get in as much of New Zealand as possible in two weeks. I think there will be many early mornings to come!!

Bye!! xxxx