Hello everybody, we've had a busy week and have seen a lot of the North Island. We left Auckland and drove straight up to Paihia which is in the Bay of Islands, at the northeast section of the North Island. We had fairly good weather, and made the most of it and did a boat tour around the islands, and saw some killer whales too! We had expected to see some dolphins, but instead we saw the whales, which was fantastic. When whales are in the Bay the dolphins disappear as the whales often eat them, so we didn't see any dolphins at all, but we were told that it's less common to see whales so we were very lucky. We had an island stopover at Otehei Bay,which had a gorgeous beach and clear water, and was very pretty (like the rest of the area). This part of New Zealand is quite tropical, and there are lovely beaches and bays scattered around. Our boat ride also took us through the 'Hole in the Rock' in Cape Brett, a massive hole that has been made by the sea through the rocky outcrops in the Bay. The waters were quite choppy, which made for an interesting ride, considering there isn't much room for manouevre! Jeff stood outside at the front of the boat (the only one to do so), to enjoy the experience even more!

We could have stayed here longer but our time schedulede for getting round the North Island was tight so we drove back down through Auckland to Hamilton, where we stayed the night on our way to Rotorua. We only had an afternoon there, and spent the time browsing the Hamilton Gardens, a lovely park area which has recreations of different types of gardens from around the world. We moved on the next day, to visit the Glowworm Caves in Waitomo. We were taken 40 metres underground to see the caves, and in the pitch black were taken on a boat ride to see the glowworms. It was really atmospheric and a nice sight to see them lit up, but we don't have photos to show you as photography was prohibited! Afterwards we had a quick walk through a nearby wood to view the Waitomo Valley from the top of a hill, which was very scenic (New Zealand is full of walks of scenic points), and then started our drive to Rotorua.