We left early and did a scenic drive down to Greymouth. We stopped at Hawks Crag where we found a seal colony - they are very inactive mammals! - and there was also a sign with the various distances of world cities which Mia and I pretended to pole dance round for a photo. We then stopped off at Punakaiki for its famous blowholes and Pancake rocks in Papapoa National Park which was really impressive. We arrived at Greymouth and checked into a backpacker hostel...

We got up to go kayaking as a small group of us had organised to hire kayaks for the day but we were then told that the wind was too strong for us to go out so we decided instead to take a water taxi to Anchorage Bay and walk back from there, which would take us 12km's. We boarded our boat and had a very quick scenic ride. Then Mia, Sarah, Morton, Amanda, Stefan and I set off on our walk. We did the loop walk first to get good views from the lookout there and th...

It was a real struggle getting up in the morning as we had to be collected to go to the ferry at 6:45am. We had to wait quite a while in the ferry terminal which was annoying as I kept thinking that I could be sleeping! We eventually got going about 8am and I was surprised at the size of the ferry and the fact that it would take 3.5 hours to get from the north island to the south as I didn't think it would be that far. On the ferry there was a cinema so we settle...

We drove through Ohakune which is a little ski village and took a picture of the giant carrot there since it is the carrot capital of NZ apparently! It's been painted black in honour of the World Cup. We then drove to Taihape, a farming town, to try our hand at Gumboot throwing. The girls had to compete against each other in pairs and I was up against Kyrstn and I ended up launching the gumboot at teh ground at high speed reaching only a foot away. It turned o...

We had to get up early to check out and get on the road to arrive in Tongariro National Park. We went to get kitted out for the hike and had to borrow some boots and gloves and hats as we'd been warned that it was going to be really cold at the top of the mountain. We then headed off in the bus to the start of the hike. The Tongariro National Park is a World Heritage Area and the Tongariro Crossing has been voted one of the best walks in the world so I was look...