Rotarua is in the central northen part of the north island and due to being built on a geothermal hotspot it features numerous hot springs, bubbling mud pool and natural vents (my first experience of this was witnessing steam gush out of grids and cracks in the pavement as we drove through the city)! Even if you don't witness geothermal activity with your own eyes you can never escape it as the town has a permanent whiff of stale eggs to it due to the sulphur fro...

Today our destination is Rotarua, an area famous for its geothermal activity. Halfway through the day we stopped off in a place called Waitomo which translates as Wai = water in Maori and Tomo = caves. Because I only had 1 week for the north island and I'd already been up to the Bay Of Islands, I only had around 5 days left and so was in a bit of a rush to do and see as much as possible in this short amount of time. Therefore although I had neither much time or ...

Today I was catching my bus south to tour the north island. It rocked up a bit late which set me in a panic thinking I'd missed it but all was fine and the driver was the same woman I had up to Pahia - Miss P. Once we'd picked everyone up we started off towards Raglan, New Zealand's main surf town. On the bus we had Johannas and Antonia (17 year old couple from Germany), Marius, Jan (both German and Jan was on my bus yesterday from Pahia), Matt (NY), two friend...

After literally a whole day stuck on the bus travelling up from Wellington to Auckland, even after all we'd said the night before none of us were really in the mood for doing much that night. I ended up walking around the city with Anna and scouting out places to go the next day/night. I was up pretty early in the morning as I'd been dying to go for a swim for about a week now and it had been near impossible to find a pool. I sat in McDonalds across the road wi...

This early start took us up to Paihia, a town included in my Stray pass which you usually have to pay extra for as it's right up the north tip of the N island. Rebecca and Annas pass also allowed them to go further up again for a day trip to Cape Rainga where you get a 4x4 across '90 Mile Beach' (which apparently is actually closer to 90km) and includes sand dune surfing and kayaking. I was a bit disappointed as I thought my pass also included this but apparently...