Exit Strategy From New Zealand: Rotorua To Taupo To Aukland To The Sky On our second last day of New Zealand we had a few things to do, so after browsing the town centre of Rotorua for an hour or two, we headed back to Taupo as we needed to return a faulty product. Fortunately, it wasn't far out of the way and we spent some more time in the Taupo centre. Hitting the road again in the afternoon, we headed up in an Auckland direction. A quick stop in Hamilton was on the cards, which is another sizable city in [View Full Entry]

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Up To Rotorua Following our Bungy in the rain, we headed into town and picked up a few gifts before heading back on the road for a short journey to Rotorua. Rotorua is a city on the southern shore of Lake Rotorua in the Bay of Plenty region, and is well known for its geothermal activity with a number of geysers and mud pools located in the city. The area was initially settled by Māori of the Te Arawa iwi and today there are still many Māori's in the area as well as a number of Māori villages. Arriving in Rotorua [View Full Entry]

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The Fellowship Of The Van Having seen enough of cities for the mean time we decided to head up north in the campervan and see where the road took us. We had no set plans for the day so we thought that it would be good to turn into a number of smaller towns on the way to Tongariro National Park. Tongariro National Park is the oldest national park in New Zealand, located in the central North Island. Situated in the centre of the park are three active volcanic mountains; Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, and Tongariro, the latter of which was used as [View Full Entry]

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Panoramic View: Geothermal Taupo Arrival In Taupo We arrived in Taupo and had our usual squint through the town in the van. It was a bit bigger than we had expected and had a similar vibe to Queenstown; not least of all in the "extreme sports" field. Choosing a campsite proved to be more taxing than we thought, but we eventually opted for one a short distance from the town centre. From Tongariro upwards, the area is classified as geothermal. This is basically because this part of the North Island lies on the area where the Indo Australian Plate and the [View Full Entry]

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Journey To Picton We were debating whether to go to Nelson, which was a further hour from the ferry and Picton and would require a return journey. Not really wanting to double back and figuring we didn't really have any time to do anything there anyway, we decided to drive from Kaikoura straight to Picton. After the enjoyment of some authentic Fish n Chips (none of this frozen fish malarkey), the drive up to Picton was pretty straightforward and left a lot of the twisting roads behind. The scenery was nice as it took in a lot of the coast. The [View Full Entry]

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Hanmer Springs Following another lengthly drive we arrived in Hanmer Springs, a small town in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand. The town is built around a popular hot spring which was discovered in the late 19th century. Many tourists flock to the area, particularly during the summer months, however when we arrived the area was bustling with tourists and the campsite was near to full with fellow campervans and caravans of various shapes and sizes. On our arrival we took a drive through the town in order to get a feel for the place before checking [View Full Entry]

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Panoramic View: At The Top Of Fox Glacier Walk To The Franz Josef Terminal Face It was raining when we woke up at our campsite at Franz Josef. The whole area was grey and shrouded in fog so we wondered what kind of effect this would have on our plans as we hoped to do some walking today. After the usual breakfast, dishes and cleaning up, we headed down the road to the visitors centre to have a look about at the activities available to us in this area. A lot of places were offering helicopter flights (expensive) or alternatively guided [View Full Entry]

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Queenstown Queenstown is in the south west of New Zealand and it is built around an inlet on Lake Wakatipu. Queenstown is a centre for adventure tourism with many companies offering skiing, jet boating, bungy jumping, and mountain biking, just to mention a few. It is where commercial bungee jumping first began and probably offers more extreme sports than anywhere else in the world and for the longest time. It has been coming under competition now though as it seems that pretty much anywhere in New Zealand and even the rest of the world, the extreme activites can now be undertaken. [View Full Entry]

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Dunedin to Milford Sound Wednesday morning was another early start as I'm sure you won't be surprised to read. Well aware that we had a long drive ahead of us in order to get to the other side of the country, we wanted to get onto the road as soon as possible. Although we spent most of the day driving, the scenery on the way was spectacular. We passed through a number of small towns and a lot of farming land. Not only did we pass by dairy and sheep farms, but also deer farms, something which we had never [View Full Entry]

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Panoramic View: Horse Rides On Otago Peninsula Dunedin - Celtic For Edinburgh Eager to get to Dunedin, we packed the van and headed south relatively early in the morning. Thankfully the wind had died down during the night and the driving conditions had improved. The drive south was really nice and rather entertaining, especially as we passed near a number of towns and streets with Scottish names like Iona, Glencoe, Cullen and Hampden. Arriving in Dunedin we parked the van just outside of town at the 'Monarch' Offices where we booked a Wildlife Tour and Cruise for 1pm [View Full Entry]

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