Hey everyone, We've been in Auckland since Friday - our last stop in New Zealand. It's a fairly nice city, although nowhere near as nice as the other places we have been. The best bit by far is the Sky Tower... Today we took a trip down to the Sky Tower, which happens to be the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. As with most things in NZ, some Kiwi somewhere decided to allow you the option of jumping off it if the mood took you. It's called the Sk...

Hello! We are now in Rotorua, our penultimate stop in New Zealand. We arrived here yesterday evening after a day trip to Waitomo. Waitomo is famous for it's glow worm caves and they offer lots of activities during which you can spend time in the caves. We chose to do black water rafting, which isn't actually rafting at all, but a five hour adventure deep underground. Our trip was called the Black Abyss and its probably the craziest thing I've ever done! After b...

Hello everyone, We arrived in Taupo on Sunday to very nice weather and a great view across the lake. We passed through Tongariro National Park on the way up here, which is apparently the fourth oldest National Park in the world and contains three active volcanoes. Lake Taupo itself is a volcanic lake formed after a huge eruption. Yesterday we took a walk out to the thermal streams which was quite a way but again the weather was really nice. Where the streams...

Hi all, We have now arrived on the North Island. We left Kaikoura on thursday and headed to Picton where we got the ferry over. It was a three hour journey, which I really wasn't looking forward to after my last boating experience! However, it was a smooth sailing and we managed to sleep for the most part. The views across the Tasman Sea were spectatcular, especially as we approached Wellington. Wellington is New Zealand's capital city. It's quite small as far...

Hey everyone, We are back in Kaikoura on our way north before we head to the North Island. Back in Queenstown, I decided to try out some hang gliding from some of the local hills. By the time we had all reached the launch the wind was coming down the hill rather than up it, so unfortunately we were unable to take off. As there were no other sites suitable for hang gliding (and it was our last day) we were offered paragliding instead at a different site. I de...