Hello once more,

We trust you all had a good Christmas and will be having a good New Year in a few hours. We are going to put up a blog for the North Island and the South Island simply because we're constantly on the move, which leads me onto the first point I should mention; if you are planning to come to New Zealand, allow as much time as you possibly can, there are more things to do here than you can possibly imagine.

So onto the North Island from Santiago, an interesting flight to say the least since we crossed the international time zone thing so we fast forwarded a whole day and arrived at four in the morning. We got a transfer from the airport at 8 to be introduced to our new home for the next 24 nights! Right, I definitely remembered it looking bigger in my imagination. After a crash course at driving an automatic and after signing over permission for rather a large excess to be taken from Alex's credit card, should ANYTHING happen, we shakely headed for Auckland. We really should have thought this through but we really wanted to see the most populated city of New Zealand. The first signs of worry showed up when we tried to park in an underground multi-storey only to realise we weren't too sure about the height of our van just as the aerial hit the concrete above. Eventually we found a parking spot on the street and took a short look around the harbour. That day we headed to our first camping site at Orere point. The scenery in New Zealand is breath-taking and it justs keeps getting better as we go further South, thats the last I'll say about it except look at the photos.

The second day we woke up after our first night in our quite narrow bed (elbows definitely in please!) and left for Coromandel and our second site Hahei beach resort, which as you can guess was right on a fantastic looking beach. There was a local attraction called Cathedral Cove which we visited nearby which was a walk through pristine rainforest to three bays, two of which are separated by a cove. It happened to be raining but we went anyway and found the first example of how isolated you can be in what is New Zealand's peak season, only about two other couples were on the beach with us.

Day three saw us head down to Rotorua and we started to get the feel of just how epic a road trip round New Zealand can be. The roads are excellent and it's definitely the best way to see the countryside, except when you get stuck behind one of those pesky campervans! We drove straight through Rotorua because it stinks of sulphur, but not before sampling the gigantic green mussels they have here in a restaurant near the coast. On the way out we popped into a geothermal park which was cool but smelt of more rotten eggs and went to camp by a lake, which was awesome.

Day four saw us head to our Christmas stop-over on lake Taupo called DeBretts, which had its own mineral spa with discounts for people staying in the camp and an awesome way to relax. Day five was Christmas eve and we went Sky-diving, what can I say except "wow" it was everything and more that you've ever heard about! We went with Taupo Tandem Sky-divers and they were awesome, we would both definitely recommend them, Alex even got a Christmas hat out of it. Day six, Merry Christmas, we wanted a roast but had to settle for burgers, I suppose the sky-dive just about compensated.

Day seven and we went down to Tongariro National Park, but not before stopping off at the National Trout Centre (honestly not as sad as you might think). We stayed in Whakapapa village right in the national park, which is 1200m above sea level. The weather up to this point had been fantastic apart from a bit of rain, but we realised how cold our van could get at night here as it started to hail! Anyway, the reason we went was to do the best one day hike in New Zealand called the Tongariro crossing, which was beautiful and took us beneath the gaze of the Tongariro volcano (aka Mount Doom in a little known film trilogy). Luckily it wasnt the season for orcs, although loads of the locals here were extras and can point to themselves in the films.

I don't know what day we're on but on the 28th we broke up the journey to the ferry by staying on the coast again in a tiny town called Paekakariki and watched to sunset. The next day we drove into Wellington, having learnt a lesson from Auckland about parking campervans in cities and wandered round before getting the ferry across to the South Island for the New Year.

All the camp sites we stayed at had excellent facilities and really good staff, we would recommend any of them. The travelling crowd here is very different from South America. We are still the youngest people we've met, barring children, but this time by about 20 years instead of one or two. Thats not to say we're stuck at camps with a load of families and hating it because we keep waking up at the crack of dawn because of the sun plus once it gets dark there's not a lot we can do anyway in our powerless campervan.

We are both loving New Zealand and will keep you posted about the South Island.

Tom and Alex xxx