Today was awesome - the weather was fantastic (hot blue sunny skies!) . Our day started about 8.30am - our activitiy for the day: Sea Kayaking. Once again we took a sea taxi and headed up to the northern regions of Abel Tasman and landed on a deserted beach, where we climbed into our Kayaks. From here we followed the coastline, and out to an island, where we saw Sting Rays and lots of Seals (which also swam around our kayaks). There were tons of deserted beaches - just beautiful. [View Full Entry]

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Today we headed to Marahau where we caught a water taxi to Torrent Bay, part of the Abel Tasman National Park. The Abel Tasman National Park is subtropical mountainous area situated right next to the coast line, with loads and loads of beach with golden sands. We walked back to Marahau - a good 20km. [View Full Entry]

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Today was supposed to be a climb of Mt Arthur (1750m) - but when we reach 1200m the cloud rolled it, with hardly any visibility, and guess what - it was raining again! We followed a different path through the subtopical forests instead. Shelley headed back to the carpark while Phil ascended a different mountain called Lodestone; which was free of cloud and had fantastic views over the region. [View Full Entry]

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Well it rained (very) heavily overnight and we awoke to..... more rain! There was some serious flooding in the valleys - we've never seen sheep swimming for their lives before! Our aim was to reach the Abel Tasman National Park and the Kahurangi National Park on the north ouf the south area. As we neared a town called Nelson (where there wasn't much to see) the SUN finally reaveled itself! yaay! Eventually we reached Moteuka. A "quick drive" up to Harwoods Hole, NZ's deepest pot hole at 176m, was pretty impressive - as was the dodgy gravel road (in a campervan) [View Full Entry]

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After of being battered by heavy rains and gales we caught the ferry to Picton in the north of the south island in New Zealand. It rained pretty much all day. Picton is a nice place but really only existing now to support the ferries. As it was raining, and after having little sleep from the previous night, we spent the whole day around picton taking some time out. In the evening we drove north for about an hour before finding somewhere to sleep for the evening. It was still raining! The views around here are great - but spoilt by [View Full Entry]

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Not much to write about today - its basically involved driving south to Wellington so that we can catch the 7.30am ferry tomorrow morning to Picton in the north of the South Island. Its rained all day too so couldn't have done much anyway. [View Full Entry]

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Today was supposed to start with another trip underground (black water rafting) in the morning, followed by driving south in the afternoon and evening. Unfortunately it had rained very heavily overnight and most of the caves had flooded - so black water rafter was cancelled. Being a bit stuck on time and ideas on what to do we decided to head over to Lake Taupo to see what we could do. By the time we'd got there it was too late to do any of the trips so we visted the natural hot baths at Taupo. We had our private hot [View Full Entry]

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Wow, today was awesome! We met up with our guides and three other clients to go on a "7 Hour Epic" caving trip.... of which 4.5hrs we spent underground. Having changed into wetsuits and harnesses the trip started with a massive 100m abseil into a huge cavern with a river crashing through the bottom of it. The abseil was fantastic; although Shelley was somewhat nervous at the start! After reaching the floor we had to work our way out - which was through the river - and heading upstream against the raging torrent! WOW! This was a real tough workout battling [View Full Entry]

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Today we vistied Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland. We watched Lady Knox Geyser erupt some 30 meters into the air which was quite an impressive thing to see - even if they did trigger the eruption using a bar of soap! We wondered around the rest of the park (which stunk of sulphur) and looked at boiling pools of water, bubbling mud pools, and other thermal thingys. Interesting to see - but more than enough for one day! Unfortunately we'd ran out of time at this point so had to skip the following: zorbing (look it up on the net), bungee jump, white [View Full Entry]

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Last night we camped on the beach at Piha and watched the sunset over the sands and islands. Today we went Cayoning at Piha (Shelley says "sorry" to Anna) and get absoluletly drenched! We abseiled down four waterfalls including a 50m pitch. We had to jump into lots of deep pools and swim back out, and crawl under huge boulders, gradually working our way downstream. The water was freezing! A great day with a bunch of really friendly travellers and guides. In the evening we set off driving to Rotorau. [View Full Entry]

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