We met my dad at the airport, he was not expecting us to meet him, so got a hopefully nice suprise. Once we got my dad settled into the kiwi way of living we set of to Taupo, which is also on the same fault line as Roturua, so has all the hot water springs and stuff but lckily without that lovely egg smell. The one reason why we came here was to do a............................ 12,000 metre tandem skydive!!!!!!!!!, (it's the cheapest in the world apparantly). Martin's brother also came to do the jump with us. To say i was scared senseless would be an understatement - i was bricking it. The ride in the plane upto 12,000 metres was the longest in my life, i was beginning to think that we were very high, until the skydiving person pointed out we had another 7,000 metres to climb - I was ready to jump then. Before i knew it we were told to suffle forward, smile at the camera and then AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! We were falling at 180mph, after the intial shock of oh i'm falling you actually start to enjoy it, i was flying, it was very surreal and all i could say over and over again was wow! Then the parachute opened and we floated down, which was great and so was the view, until the instructor decided to liven it up and do a spiral, i really thought i was going to throw up, but manage to keep it in as it would of hit the instructor in the face. Anyway we landed safetly on our bum. This was the greatest experience of my life, although it is one i will never ever repeat!! - I would recommended it. Anyway after all that exitement we headed into the tongario mountains, which are actually volcanoes!! The next day we completed the tongario crossing which is the best one day walk in New Zealand (9 hours long), and it wasn't joking. We climbed a volcano called Mount Ngarunroe (think i spelt that wrong), this is approx 2287metres high, the views were amazing - this volcano you may actually have seen as it is Mt Doom in the lord of the rings. It has a huge crator in the middle of it, which was were the ring was dropped into it. We are next off to the windy capital of New Zealand - Wellington. Will send a postcard from here.