Hi everyone. I am just in our hostel in Auckland having just filled up on the leftovers of an enormous pasta bake we made last night and returning from the pub where England have just drawn with the Kiwis - probably as exciting as cricket will ever get?! Anyway, we arrived in Rotorua last Saturday afternoon with the plan of renting a car so that we could head east to Gisbourne and meet up with a few relatives that until now I had never met. However, every car rental in Rotorua had seen us Brits coming and decided to rent every car out to who they possibly could! So we had to jump on some more public transport with the plebs!!

The following morning we hopped on the Naked bus (fully clothed might I add) and headed to Gisbourne. Having never met anyone of my relatives we were a bit nervous but after meeting up with everyone all seemed fine (or so they made out!) We stayed with dad's cousin Alan and Yvonne who made us both very welcome and fed us (always a bonus as a backpacker! - Liam didn't want to leave!) On the Monday we had a great morning with Alan and Yvonne's son Chris (my 2nd cuz) as we went motorcrossing on the beach which was really cool and neither Liam or myselfdislocated anything or broke any bones !! Bonus! Things were going too well and something had to give. It did. Liam's slats on his bed - he's just eating too much!Anyway, everything went really well on meeting the relatives and Gisbourne was a really cool place and it was a shame we couldn't stay longer for some more free food and trying some of the surf on all the nice beaches. Homework; Gisbourne is the first place in the world to see the sun rise everyday as it is the furthest place east you can possibly go. I know your all impressed!

Form Gisbourne we jumped back on the naked bus (yet again fully clothed) and headed back to Rotorua. As it is a 5 hour journey, there wasn't too much we could do when we arrived back so we wondered around the thermal park which is basically where the earths plateau is so thin that boiling mud and water shoot out of the ground. Pretty impressive apart from it smells like fart the whole way round (must be something to do with the sulphur as there had been no beer or curry on the previous night). After yet another quiet night (that would be three in a row!!!) we headed to Auckland where we haven't done too much except wonder up the Sky Tower (tallest building in the southern hemisphere) and then to a pub to watch the cricket. Auckland is another large city but that's basically it.

Hope all are well and we're still having a an absolute awesome time. Will write soon as onward to the Bay of Islands tomorrow followed by Cape Reinge!

Will