The next day we headed to Auckland. On the way there we stopped at Hobberton the town from the Lord of the Rings. However our heads were seriously aching from the night before and all we could think about was getting hold of some greasy food. We saw the golden arches and we naturally ran towards McDonalds to satisfy our cravings.

When we eventually got to Auckland we were amazed at the size of the city. Everywhere in NZ has been so small compared to what we had expected and even Wellington was tiny for a capital city. But Aukland feels much bigger and even has skyscrapers and everything! The first night we checked into our hostel and had a takeaway to deal with our hangovers. We hadn't been that impressed with our hostel when we check in as it seemed very dirty and ugly but it wasn't until we were actually getting ready for bed that we realized how bad it was.Gee had found cockroaches both in our bedroom and in the bathrooms and we were not impressed. After a bit of deliberation ( all very dramatic) we decided we really didn't want to stay and we headed to the reception to complain. Unexpectedly the receptionist was actually really helpful and even transferred us to the newer hostel that was just around the road. So we got dressed again out of our PJ's and headed down to check into a much nicer room and for the same price, bonus.

The next day we spent milling around the city and preparing for our road trip ( me, Gee, Em and Sian were all hiring a car to head up north, exciting but very very scary). That night was Joel's last night travelling after 8 months away and we all went out for dinner to tearfully say our goodbyes. We all went to bed happily full ready for the next day. SH

Whilst the Kiwi Experience was awesome, we decided that we didn't want to go on the bus to Bay of Islands so instead we decided to roadtrip it up in a car with gee and Emily. We hired Sally, as we now affectionally call her, and headed north to Pahia. Soph and I were down as drivers but seeing as I find it hard enough to negotiate the mean streets of Herefordshire, we decided Soph would drive us up there. Our first challenge occurred about 10 seconds after the car hire women waved us off. 'ECO' started flashing on the screen and we had no clue what this means (suggestions are welcome). But we decided that seeing as we hadn't broken down yet, it was all ok, and well there was no manual to help anyway so it would have to be ok. Challenge 2 involved getting out of Auckland. All fine till we ended up on a motorway with no idea where we going so just screamed. Bizarrely, after some questionable random decisions about where to go, we actually got on the right road. Challenge 3: filling up Sally with petrol. After arriving at the garage (we missed about 5 due to us all going 'oh look we just passed a petrol station' and were rapidly running out of petrol), we had problems opening the petrol door. After pushing every button in the car which meant our wipers were on, the bonnet was up and strange sounds were coming out of somewhere, we managed to eventually open the door, much to the amusement of every other driver there. We are doing nothing for the 'girls can drive too' cause. Sorry ladies.

After buying essential sweets for the roadtrip and turning up the radio, we had a really fun drive up the coast, but soon came to challenge 4 - hills. Sally, loaded down with the 4 of us, 4 rucksacks and only 1.2 engine does not cope well with hills. She's also pretty old. This resulted in Soph driving up in 2nd gear while yelling at all drivers that came too close. Emily's map reading skills successfully got us to Pahia with very little (well, for us) mishaps. I was not trusted with the map at any point. We spent Friday driving from bay to bay, seeing this lovely little area, taking some photos and encouraging Sally up the hills. We weren't quite sure about the ability of the handbrake as she seemed to roll back when parked. Once, when we parked by the sea, we did take everything out just incase she rolled into the sea never to be seen again, but we did actually come back to still see her. On Saturday I was in charge of driving back which actually went quite well…until we got back to Auckland. We weren't too sure of how to actual get back into the city so quite a lot of screaming involved. I also had issues with sally's indicators. They're on the wrong side and back to front so quite often I put the windscreen wipers on, or indicated right to go left and left to go right. It was all very confusing. We somehow got back, not without me almost reversing into Gee (sorry…), and not without me and Emily getting even more lost when we got stuck going down a one way street the wrong way and a Granny yelled at us. Driving round Australia could get interesting…

So now our NZ adventure is over and we're both gutted, surprise surprise. We wish we had longer than a month here, but we've said that about everywhere we've been. And the next stop is hardly a hardship: Fiji!! We decided we needed a much needed holiday as this travelling malarkey is very tiring so we've got 2 weeks of lying on a beach to look forward to, and I get to see my Mum for one week! She's putting us up in a hotel for the first 2 nights so we can't wait to see their reaction when we pitch up with our dirty rucksacks looking like hobo's. SJ xx