Absolutely chucking it down today in Wellington. We went to a couple of museums but couldn't do much else as it was too wet. Had fish and chips for lunch (which is a real treat for us) and had to change our route slightly - we now have 14 days in Bali rather than 10 - its a hard life!!! Jacob Charlie was born today......... :-)

Drove to Napier a couple of days ago. We are staying at a campsite and our plot looks straight over the beach. Which has massive waves all of the time and black sand. We went to a local pig on a spit night on our first night here which was interesting and not what we expected, it was like a social club back home, and the whole town came for the roast. The food was really nice though. We also did a guided tour of Napier, which was destroyed in an eart...

Went to Waitomo caves the other day, we went to try and do some caving but the water level was too high so we couldn't do it. We went into to the caves instead and saw the glowworms. Which were really impressive, hundereds of them like tiny lights in the sky. Spent the last couple of days at Taupo seeing the sights. Saw the Arriatiatia rapids (they open a dam up at certain times during the day to create the rapids for the tourists), Huka Falls, and the Cr...

Spent the last few days in Rotorua, and visited some of the thermal areas. Saw the Lady Knox Geyser which erupts every dat at 10.30am on the dot, and the Pohutu and Prince Charles Feathers Geyers. We also saw loads of caves, steaming mud pools and silica terraces. Its a really interesting place. At Waiotapu we went to a midday maori concert in their meeting house. We had to elect a chief of the group who had to accept the peace giving from the warrio...

We left Bay of Islands a few days ago and travelled to the Bay of Plenty. Stopped off at a few places on the way. At Miranda we had a dip in the thermal pools on the camp site before we had dinner which was very nice, it was chucking it down with rain. We also stopped at a couple of beaches on the way to Whakatane to get our boat to White Island. White island is an active volcano which last erupted in 2003. We got the boat to the island, which was a roug...