We were up disgustingly early today. Disgustingly. To go for a 6 hour walk. What was I thinking?! Arriving at the start of the walk at 7am, we began our day more than a little begrudgingly, wondering who tricked us into thinking this would be a good idea. Even worse, within the first hour of walking, my famous DofE injuries had made themselves known once again. This meant the option to add on another 2 hours to climb Mount Doom was completely out of the...

We were gutted to be leaving Rotorua and the Maori village, and with the weather very clouded over we weren't optimistic about being able to skydive today. Our first stop in the morning was Te Puia, a thermal park with geysers, boiling mud and a kiwi bird house. We thought paying $30 for this would be better than doing an hour walk, so we headed in with high expectations, excited to finally see a kiwi bird! However, our enthusiasm quickly went as we had...

We already knew this day was going to be brilliant - we had both Hobbiton and our Maori tribe encounter, but I don't think we realised just how good the day would be. We first stopped at the Ruakuri Reserve for a half an hour walk, which we're pretty sure was just an excuse for our driver to have a coffee. Our next stop was Hobbiton. For someone who much prefers Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings, I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy Hobbiton, but I was ...

Today we got on the bus to Waitomo. Stopping first for a walk over swing bridges and through a 1km pitch black tunnel - getting us used to the dark for our black water rafting later in the day. A short while later we arrived in Waitomo and David went straight off on his rafting trip as he had picked the 5 hour trip, rather than the 3 hour one I had picked. So while he started his adventure, I got us sorted in our twin room and ordered us pizza for our re...

Usually I'm not ecstatic to be getting up to catch a bus at 8am, but seeing as this bus meant the start of our adventures, I let it slide. We almost instantly made friends with a girl called Natasha, who found it particularly amusing watching me have to look after David already. Within minutes of being on the bus, we realised this was going to be quite the experience, as our driver Mangee informed us we would be speed-dating very shortly! This turne...