We arrived in Taupo and stayed in a hostel that was designed for the summer. It was very cold so all our layers came out here. We met some interesting people here and met a winter guide for the Tongario Crossing which we both wanted to do. He was saying that there was currently a huge snow storm passing over and that the walk had to be cancelled for the last few days. There is a huge lake in Taupo called Lake Taupo surprisingly. This is the largest lake in N...

Kia' Ora As the Maoris say which means good health , good luck, is that ok?, stay safe and anything else they feel like. We left Auckland and come over to Rotarua which is an awesome town. It is a town built on a volcano, when it erupted hundreds of years ago the volcano collapsed in on itself making a crater which the town is built in. There is still a lot of geothermal activity, steam comes out of drains on the streets and there are boiling mud pools and hot...

We moved into the amazing Whaldorf Apartments where we went from having a double bunk bed in our room to having a full on furnished two bedroom apartment including balcony (which if you stood at the right angle you could see the Auckland skyline) On San's birthday we took full advantage of the apartment and slept for the afternoon in peace and quiet, a nice change from the noise of the Jucy Hotel. We got some nice NZ wine and had a few sips on our very cold balco...

The flight to Auckland wasn't too bad, though it was a much older plane than our first and everything rattled a lot, San managed to first spill a beer over me and then ten minutes later herself so we were both wet and smelling of beer for the entire flight which obviously helped!! We got into the city and checked into the Jucy hostel and went for a walk up by the harbour and had something to eat before promptly falling asleep for ten hours. We've spent a couple...

On our second from last day we got up and went to Zoo Negra which was about half an hour outside of KL and the weather was beautiful and really hot. We saw loads of monkeys who kept sticking their hands out of the cages to get some food and you could feed the elephants although one thought that Jeff's shoulder was a banana and had a bit of a sniff. There was an animal show with seals, weird giant gerbil things and flamingos doing tricks but after half an hour s...