Kia Ora. After Franz Josef we headed to Lake Wanakafor 3 nights. The weather was so nice there and it was a really cool place. We started off by both doing a skydive over the lakes and southern Alps, which was amazing! The rest of the time we were there was spent chilling by the lake, going for walks and had a fun night out in the bar below the hostel. Mike won a Nevis Arc voucher for Queenstown by doing a horizontal bung with a guy called Ross in the bar. It inv...

Hey everyone. Hope you're not all too cold back home. We just keep running out of suncream! Since we last posted, we nearly climbed Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings, but couldn't in the end, as the weather closed in as soon as we got to the base. We went from Taupo down to a place called River Valley for a night. While we were there we went horseriding in really cool mountains. We thought it would be really tame, but we were allowed to properly canter and gallop...

Happy New Year folks. We've been having great fun since our last entry. Left Auckland and spent a night in Whitianga on the Coromandel peninsula, which was a nice beach town. On the way we stopped at a geothermal hotspot originally named Hot Water Beach. As it was low tide, we were able to dig holes in the sand by the shoreline and sat in piping hot water for half an hour before the tide came in and cooled them down. It was weird but fun. The next day we caug...

Merry Christmas all! We got to Auckland on time on the 21st and stayed in a cool, big hostel in the city centre for a couple of nights. It's not a very big city, but has a nice harbour to walk around, though we couldn't stay here long as there isn't much to do. On the 23rd we got the Kiwi Experience bus up to Paihia, Bay of Islands, a few hours North. On the bus, the scenery on the way was very English, as was the weather, so we definately felt at home! We stay...