Kia Ora! Well, where should we start with our Taupo experience! We drove to Taupo from Hamilton on Monday afternoon and headed straight to 'Freefall' where we wanted to do our skydive as we were eager to get it booked up. There were free spaces but the weather was poor and they hadn't been flying due to the cloud cover and rain. We were disappointed that the weather had turned against us but decided to book in for 11am the following day and kept everything cro...

Kia Ora! Kie and Lappin got up extra early to watch England play Ireland in the Six Nations. Sophie rose later and, once we'd all got ourselves ready, we hit the road to Rotorua. On the way we picked up a hitchhiker headed for Tauranga, an old guy dressed in an orange, corduroy suit! He swiftly proceeded to tell us that he'd written a 500 page document to the Maori's to help them in getting their freedom. Although he said he didn't know what he'd written as he...

Kia Ora! We arrived in Hamilton on Thursday evening after a short bus journey on Nakedbus.com - thankfully everyone was fully clothed! When we got to Hamilton, Lappin met us and took us to our home for the next few days at Ciaran and Courtney's. We settled in for the evening and made ourselves at home. On Friday we woke up relatively early and made our way to Waitomo in rather dreary and grim weather. We were keen to get to Waitomo Caves as we'd heard good th...

Kia Ora! Thursday: We arrived in Auckland after a quick one and a bit hour flight with Air NZ. Matt (aka Kiwi; one of Kie's friends from Bugbrooke RFC who returned to NZ a couple of years ago) came and picked us up from the airport and we left our bags with him while we made our own way into the city for the day by train. We started off in Onehunga, where Kiwi works, and had a look around the malls and shops. We were both very well behaved in Dress Smart - a mas...

(Day 20) Kia Ora! We woke up fairly early and sat around eating breakfast before Lappin had to get ready to go. Kie took Lappin to the airport ready for his 11 am flight. When Kie got back we got ready to go to Akaroa for the day. We set off in our campervan which had remained unused for the past couple of days. The scenery to Akaroa was beautiful and it was a lovely, sunny day. Once we arrived in Akaroa we walked along the sea front and found ourselves i...