Beyond the Caves toAuckland - the end of NZ (for now?!) From Waitomo we had a week or so to get to Auckland for our flight to Sydney and went on a round the houses route from windy, surf bum heaven Raglan across to Hamilton to spend a very welcome and enjoyable night spent with Matt, Meika, Danika + Taylor, eating a fraction of one of their home killed cows and drinking way more beer than I should have. Thanks must go to Dan dan for giving up her bed for 2 wea...

Waitomo caves We ummed and ahhed a little bit about coming here as it seemed like a honey pot for tourists i.e. all the NZ whistle stop tours pass by here and as I'm sure you can appreciate we like to think we are a better class of tourist (just let us think it at least, please!). Anyway we decided to go see them and I am certainly glad we did, we spent a wonderful afternoon in 2 different caves. In one of them we saw thousands of glow worms (no pictures of th...

We're Doomed! Wednesday 25th November, 2009 This was the walk that I had been waiting for since I had read about things to do on the north island - the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Tongariro National Park was the first national park to be established in New Zeland when the Maori chief back in 1887 gifted the sacred site to the nation. There are 3 big volcanic peaks in the park - the namesake, Mt Tongariro is actually the smallest at 1,968m high. Mt Ngauruhoe s...

Hubble, bubble, and lucky for us travellers, no toil or trouble! Sunday 22nd - Tuesday 24th November, 2009 We knew that we were getting close to the geothermal area of New Zealand when we starting smelling rotten eggs! It's the sulphur in the earth which causes the smell - but you soon get used to it when you have a stinky brother who, throughout your childhood, subjected you to death-by-farts torture. With that aside, the best thing is that there are lots ...

A bumpy road and next to no people One thing you really notice moving from the south to the north island is how much more populous the north is in general, but there is an exception to this, it's a place called Lake Waikeramoana in the north east of the main chunk of the island. We arrived there after visiting Napier on the east coast, and we travelled there on our way to our eventual destination - Rotorua and it's various sulphur stenches and steaming hot wat...