We wake up this morning and leave the hostel slightly later than planned (we had hoped to be off by 8am but because our washing got locked in the laudry room overnight we had to wait for reception to open at 9am - whoopsies!). After quite a scenic 5 hour drive down (and it was all me - no beeps this time, getting better!) we arrive at Wellington and our first impressions are that it looks quite industrial, but then again I suppose it is the capital city. And it's raining so things never look as nice when it's dull! We [View Full Entry]

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After not such a good nights sleep through worrying I would miss the alarm, we woke at 5am to make our pack lunches ready for our collection at 5.40am (ouch!). The coach drops us at the park with a map (and the other 43 people on the coach of course) and then it's up to ourselves to follow the track that will take us across the Volcano's (which are still active) to the other end of the national park on our 7 hour Journey. The track begins quite pleasantly through with the stream running right at the side of us and [View Full Entry]

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Today must have been the funniest hangover in the world - which always helps when your feeling ill! It appears I may have drunk a little more rum than I thought as I wake with my make-up smudged all over my face and a taste in my mouth like i had been licking the carpet all night. Diane is feeling pretty much the same, so we decide that junk food is in order and after dressing (no energy for showers but we did brush our teeth) we headed straight for good old Macdonalds. On the way I trip up over a [View Full Entry]

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Well today we thought we would do something different and so after some deliberation we decided to . . . . SKY DIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEP, THAT"S RIGHT, I HAVE JUMPED FROM A PLANE HIGH UP IN THE SKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's something that we both fancied doing and everyone has told us that Taupo is the cheapest place to do it, so after waking this morning and seeing it was a clear day we thought 'why the hell not!!'. After booking it at reception with a company called Freefall, we wandered around the town for an h [View Full Entry]

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Well, today is another day that I'm going to confront my fear of heights by white water rafting of a 7m tall waterfall, here goes . . . .. . We get collected from our hostel at 9am and taken to the Raft Centre. The centre has also introduced a new 'sport' called sledging which involves basically going through the rapid on a sled in the water and we start talking to some people who have signed up to do it. A girl from our hostel then advises us all that she saw it in the paper where an older woman [View Full Entry]

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After another pleasing early start of 8.30am we drive across to the West Side of the island to Mount Maunganui, Diane has read about it and quite liked the look of it so we thought we would pop in and say hello! The town is again well known for its surfing and alot larger than Raglan, although I think you would get bored here if you stayed longer then a few days. After completing the base walk of the Mountain (Di has got me into this walking thing) we have a wander around the town, then make our sandwiches and eat [View Full Entry]

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After an early(ish) start of 8.15am we headed to the next big town down of Waitomo. The area is very well known for having lots of underground caves which have glow worms and the thing to do here we are told, is to go Black Water Rafting in them - OK then! Black water rafting basically consists of sitting in a black inner-tube and floating your way through the underground river, a bit like donut rings at Alton Towers. Today we are very organised and book our caving adventure, then go and sort out our accommodation (we are giving the YHA [View Full Entry]

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We woke in our lovely room, got ready and then headed to the beach ready for our walk to Cathedral Cove. It was a 1hr 30 min return journey up and down some steep slopes but it was soo worth it when we got there. As you can see from the pictures it named that because the white arch looks like a Catherdral arch - just incase you hadn't caught on! Once the pictures had been took we thought it would only be rude if we didn't swim in the sea (it's soooo cold here) and then after a sneaky 45 [View Full Entry]

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Yeah - today we get our car! We were collected at 11.00am and by 11.30am we were driving out of the car lot with our new friend for the next 24 days. We have named her Juicy Lucy - AKA The Silver Bullet (although we soon found out she didn't like hills and became more of a dud bullet, but we love her anyway!). After negogiating our way out of Auckland (well, rather Diane drove us out) we headed to the Coromandel Penisular. Not much to see in Coromandel town but very pretty none the less and we took the coastal [View Full Entry]

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We wake up this morning not feeling our best (that wine is strong over here!) but we get up, make our packed lunches and head out for our last wander of the city. As Di wants a watch, we head to Victoria Park Market but the Kiwi's have not got the gist of what a proper market is over here - not a patch on good old Wigan! After that we try to make our way to Auckland bridge to see if we can walk over it, but it's a bit tricky when it's all motorway and no walk way so [View Full Entry]

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