Hey! Sorry for the long gap in messages but we have been so busy since we arrived in NZ. As you can guess from the fact that I am writing from New Zealand we made it save and sound to New Zealand with only the loss of a day to worry about! We spent the first few days in Auckland, we all really loved the city. It is a gorgeous city with a massive harbour, sky scrapers and brilliant shops! After being in South America we all felt a bit starved of good clothes shops so all had a bit of a spend despite the fact our backpacks are already bursting at the seams!! We just spent the few days in Auckland shopping and sight seeing. It has a lovely harbour where the Americas cup yaht race set off from so we saw some gorgeous boats and had a few drinks in the swanky bars around the harbour. We also went up the sky tower which has amazing 360 degree views of the city. We went up at dusk so we saw the sunsetting up there which was really beautiful as Auckland is surrounded by water so it looks amazing from up high. We resisted the urge to jump out of the tower which is an option in this country that is obsessed with adrenaline sports. Though we did see a few people jumping down which was close enough for my liking! At the moment we are on a tour bus called the Stray bus.We are on the bus for a week going round the North Island of New Zealand and so far it has been brilliant. We have met loads of people and seen lots of gorgeous New Zealand. NZ is truly gorgeous, and it is really sparsely populated so there is loads of land that is really untouched. It has loads of hills that look like tellytubby hills as well as amazing coast lines and mountains covered in palm trees. On our first day on the bus we went to somewhere called Hahei which was on the East Coast of NZ. We were staying right on the beach and it was the most gorgeous beach, the sea is so clear and the sand is really white and there were loads of tiny tree covered islands just offshore. Nikki said it was a lot like the beaches in Thailand. We went on a walk to another beach called Cathedral Cove which was stunning, it has a big arch made of rock which made the beach look really cool. On our second day we went to a place called Raglan which was a surfer beach which was also good. Yesterday we had an amazing day. In the morning we went to a place called Waitomo which has loads of glow worm caves. The adventurous adrenaline loving kiwi spirit must have been with us because we decided to go caving in the glow worm caves! I was a bit worried at first as we squeezed down a ladder in to a tiny dark cave but then the cave opened up loads so i felt more reassured! We were underground for about 2.5 hours during which time we squeezed through tiny caves, climbed through rocks and swam through underground water. It was absolutely amazing - but quite cold! The best bits were when they told us to turn the lights off on our hats and look at the glow worms - there are literally millions down in the cave and with our lights of it is like the night sky filled with stars so it is really gorgeous. At one point we were floating through the water on rubber rings in the dark just looking up at the glow worms so it was really amazing! In the evening we went to a Maori show in a place called Rotorua which is a traditional Maori area. It was brilliant, the girls learned to do Poi, which is a dance the Maori women do with balls on string which they flick around. I was rubbish but it was fun! We also learned traditional Maori games. The boys learnt to do the Haka (like the all blacks do at the beginning of their games), it looked really fun but in Maori culture girls arent allowed to do the Haka. It was a really fun night though and we learnt loads about the Maori culture. This morning we went to a thermal village near Rotorua. All the area around Rotorua has geothermal activity. The village was over loads of geothermal activity so there were loads of geysers that kept going off as well as boiling pools. Maoris still live in the village and live quite traditionally. They bathe in the thermal pools and cook their meat by just leaving it in boxes slightly below ground where it is cooked by the heat of the earth. They cook their veg by just leaving it in the bubbling thermal pools that are about 100 degrees in heat. It was really really interesting and amazing to see though it did smell very strongly of sulphur - ie eggs!! When we left Rotorua we stopped at somewhere called Kerosene Creek which is a creek that is warmed by the geothermal activity again, but isnt too hot like the ones in the village so you can go swiming in it. After that we stopped to see some mud pools that were once again brought to boiling point by the geothermal activity so they were just big bubbling pools of mud which was really weird to see. So all in all we are having a wicked time in NZ so far and we can see why everyone raves about it! Despite a spell of bad weather that is moving in we are having a wicked time. We are also picking up the kiwi lingo and so all our sentences are ending in 'sweet as!' Take care xxx