MATT & KEL: The journey south from Rotorua has been stunningly beautiful drive, a highlight being passing through Taupo, which on the banks of the lake stands Mt Tongariro which doubled as Mount Doom and Mordor in the Lord Of The Rings....but set against the blue sky and the crystal blue water it looks much less ominous. On the way down we visited Wai'o'tapu thermal springs which were awesome. Green pools, red pools, yellow pools and massive spurts here ther...

Kel: The next day we re routed our trip south to Rotarua, otherwise known as fartopolis, home of many thermal springs. We stopped off on the way for 'a wee something', Matthew's daily term which he starts talking about around 30 mins after he's had breakfast. Bakeries - bakeries in NZ are absolutely awesome (just like Scotland ;> ) Not only do they do great sausage rolls, but they put other stuff in them like potato or cheese and stuff, they do great pies and...

Kel: Coromandel Town is another beautifully quaint town on the coast. Kind of like it's set in the fifties. A frontier old gold rush town that's kept that kind of look. We had a really nice evening there after our sunset drive and had our taste of local oysters and mussels then went to listen to a local band which was pretty cool. The next day we went on a wee train up into the mountains that a couple of guys made themselves and still to this day run. They were ...

Kel: Hi again. So, where were we? Rawene. We left there the following morning to the start of probably the most driving we've done in a day so far. We headed down the west coast of the north island toward the Waipoua Forest, home to the amazing Kauri trees. NZ has been a true test of our driving. Loads of really steep and really curvy roads up and down hills. We both had to stop at first and get out ... high chuckability factor. We first visited the most amazing...

Kel: The next day the campervan site owner strongly advised us not to leave cause of the storm damage on the roads that he expected. We took this as his sales pitch to get us to stay another night and left all the same. We wanted to head up to Cape Reinga the most northern point of the island and see the cool lighthouse so off we went. We didn't have any probs at all and thought reactions were all a bit dramatic.... until we got to the river. There was a massive ...