Today Pavel and Marco really wanted to go skydiving as Taupo is the skydiving capital of New Zealand and maybe even of the world, I'm not sure. I wanted a lazy day so said I'd come but wouldn't jump. Anyone who has known me for a while will know that I hate and am petrified of freefall and that there is no way that anyone would get me jumping from a plane. No way. So I went with to take pictures from below. We were picked up by a limousine from the hostel and tak...

Yesterday I took a bus to Rotorua. I first very seriously repacked and threw about 2 thirds of my stuff into a big bag and left it in storage at the YHA. My lighter backpack I dragged the 30 minute walk to the busstop which, even being lighter than usual, proved pretty tiring. I picked up a Dunkin Donut on the way for breakfast and in honour of Kirsten de Haas with who introduced me to the nicest donuts in the world in New York, exactly a year previously. I had a...

Today I took the ferry to Devonport, just across Auckland Harbour. Devonport is super cute. It's like a little seaside town with cute little houses and shops and stuff. I really liked it. I clambered straight up the steep slope of Mt Victoria, a dead volcano in the middle of the town (yeah, straight up. The path spiralled around it going up gradually but I decided I was more hardcore and ambled straight up through the high grass. It was harder than I thought at m...

So I flew from Fiji to Auckland with Air New Zealand on the 14th of Jan. The flight is 3 hours which is nothing compared to the 12.5 and 11 hour flights I had previously had so it felt as though just after the seatbelt sign had been switched off and we had been given food, the sign was back on again and we were going down. I was stunned at the shortness of the flight, it felt like half an hour max. That could be because I was used to long flights but also coul...