We'd planned to head off on Sunday to Coromandel, a supposedly popular and beautiful peninsula north- east of Auckland. Well, with the weather the previous day and a very dreich outlook on the morning, it didn't auger at all well. After a bit of humming and haa-ing we decided to wait and see, but plan on the basis that we would go - otherwise we'd have lounged around in our goonies and not achieved anything. And it was just as well that we did because suddenly th...

How time flies! It is now one week since we arrived in Auckland and, although the weather has been wetter than we've generally experienced we've also had lots of sunny spells and it's not too bad at all considering it's winter. Our second Sunday saw us head off to the theatre for some 'high-brow' entertainment - Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Civic Theatre, an outrageously camp musical about the adventures of three drag queens who travel from Sydney to do a...

The golf next morning was definitely off when we woke up to glowering, wind-swept skies. We decided to get on our way to Auckland despite the weather, which was absolutely atrocious and the driving conditions abominable with torrential rain and extremely poor visibility - and with radio weather forecast predicting more and worse to come. But E, being the excellent driver he is, pushed on through what looks as if it would be a lovely area so we are planning to ret...

Before we set off from Napier we thought we should take the short drive to Bluff, a 500 ft hill in the centre of Napier that was unaffected by the earthquake. So all the older style colonial houses remain and are set prettily along narrow streets that wind up to the top of the hill. Our visit saw us looking out over blankets of low cloud with glimpses here and there of Cape Kidnappers, Napier beach and the town below. The lookout is a very pleasant reserve and on...

It was still overcast when we got up the next morning so we decided to head off to Napier. By the time we had packed and were ready to set off, the sun had come out so we took a quick spin along the shore of Lake Rototua and around the very pleasant town centre where the original baths were located. They were set in pretty parkland on the lakeside. Rotorua is really quite a nice place if you can get used to the smell of sulphur - know what we mean?We had to retra...