We are in Auckland, having nearly come to the end of our time in New Zealand. Since our last postcard we have been exploring Northland, the far north of the North Island. We have visited the kauri forests, home to some truly enormous trees (up to 5m trunk diameter). We got severely rained on exploring the forests in extremely short bursts. The weather improved markedly for our visit to the Bay of Islands, where we did a boat cruise around the bay and Zoe swam wit...

We are in Rotorua enjoying a break from the rain which has been very heavy and persistent lately. Today we visited Te Whakarewarewa, a thermal village where there has been a maori settlement for over 300 years and home to the Pohutu geyser (see picture!), as well as bubbling mud pools and boiling lakes etc.. After arriving in the north island 5 days ago we spent some time in Wellington, and we particularly enjoyed the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand. We visited t...

Hello, we are in the adventure capital of New Zealand (and, probably the world) so today we have been....doing our washing. No, but Ed has been on a jet boat ride and I've been horse riding too. Queenstown is a beautifully situated town on the banks of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by snowy mountains. The area around Queenstown was used for filming large sections of Lord of the Rings but we haven't seen any orcs yet. We have been overloading on beautiful scenery hav...

We have made our way down to Dunedin - we have been in New Zealand for around a week now. We have seen some beautiful scenery along the way: in particular on the Banks Peninsula and in and around Mount Cook National Park. Two days ago we stopped off at a place called Moeraki just north of Dunedin. There we saw the Moeraki boulders, almost perfectly spherical boulders on the beach some of which look like alien eggs. A short drive away from there we visited a pengu...

Hello, We are now in New Zealand and it is raining. However we have a nice big campervan complete with heater, shower and toilet, so no need to run to the amenities block any more. The scenery has been superb and we have only just pottered around Christchurch really. Food and wine are cheap, and apart from a few strange road rules driving around is easy. We just need to sort out how to watch the world cup and life will be perfect.