Hello all

We have waved goodbye to the Cambridge hotel which we shared with the Vanuatu national football team who were playing New Zealand, beaten 4-1 so lots of long faces around -including ours because the hotel had no time to give us breakfast due to feeding the team! We have now arrived in Taupo after a five hour drive and it's great to be out of the city and into the beautiful scenery. We are in a self catering challet ane are appreciating having space and peace to ourselves. There are loads of adventure activities to do here but we have decided to be kind to ourselves and avoid the sky dives in favour of sitting watching the sunset from our terrace.

This area is part of the 'thermal explorer highway' so there are lots of hot springs, geysers and thermal pools....the only thermal things we've known till now has been our vests and flasks! We are living quite near to the local volcano which is still active and last erupted two months ago....eek.

We have arrived at the same time as hundreds of cyclists who are here for a race round the lake (the lake is apparently the size of Singapore Island according to an Englishman we met) so it's a busy time here. To avoid the chaos we are leaving tomorrow to head up to Rotorua, our last stop before Auckland. We will be making time to stop off at Orakei Korako a thermal area where there are bubbling mud pools and other exciting things like that.

NZ question of the day; "so girls where in Ireland are your beautiful accents from?"

Night night, good morning or whatever suits your particular circumstance

Susi and Adrienne x