After spending the night in Auckland we headed up to the bay of islands which is north of Auckland. We managed to get a good double room in a place called the bay adventure which had a spa and swimming pool although it was too cold to use it! We booked on a boat trip the next day which takes you on a tour around the islands and to do dolphin spotting. The boat trip took us around lots of little islands and to the hole in the rock which was basically a huge r...

From Rotorua we made our way to the famous Waitomo caves. There are more than 300 caves in the area but there are 3 in particular which are popular with the tourists and these are the glow-worm cave, Aranui cave and Ruakuri cave. The Waitomo town is tiny with just a small local shop and a pub and a few hostels and B+Bs., We stayed at the YHA in a dorm which was pretty new so was clean and tidy and we only had to share with one other person. We booked on t...

Our next destination was to Lake Taupo which is almost in the centre of the North Island and is huge! The lake was caused by a massive volcanic explosion almost 26'500 year ago and is one of the biggest explosions of all time. As you are probably gathering like us New Zealand has in the past not been the safest of places to live! We travelled to Taupo with our friends again and stayed in a nice place called the backpackers retreat. When we got there it was rain...

The ferry over from Picton to Wellington was 3 and a half hours and a pretty rough ride. It was windy and rainy for a start so we knew it wasn't going to be great and it was a shame really as the scenery is supposed to be amazing! When we got to Wellington harbour it was only a short ride to the YHA Wellington and the Hostel was just like a hotel and really nice. We shared a dorm room with Darren and Kirstie which had its own bathroom which was nice! We disc...

We arrived in Blenheim about an hour and a half after leaving our flying visit to Nelson. We found a couple of hostels but we were surprised to hear they were they were full because of hockey players! We really didn't think that people would be staying an hour's drive away from the tournament! After checking out a few places we were a bit stuck for what we should do, but we had driven through a small town about 10 minutes away called Renwick. We decided to drive ...