North Island, Sweet As

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We started in Auckland and had to spend 6 nights there, which was a bit annoying but we had to hang around until we could pick up our camper. In Auckland we tried to do as little as possible to save money for the rest of the island. We saw the city and got to walk across Auckland bridge to watch people bungy jump and got to see a few Maori sites. We went to a bar called Minus 5 and guess what...it was bloody cold. We had to wear big parker coats and gloves and everything in the bar was made out of ice, including the chairs, walls, bar and cocktail glasses, I was actually dancing to keep warm, even though I looked like an idiot. Our hostel had overbooked our room, so we were put in a spare room on the staff floor. This worked out great for us, we had a bigger room, tv and made friends with some of the staff including the people who worked in the kitchen which resulted in us getting free large meals for tea everynight.

We finally picked up the camper and it was much better than what we were expecting, we left Auckland straight away and headed to a place called Hahei. The views here were amazing and we walked along a trail to see lots of beaches, the first had a limestone arch in the cliff which led onto another beach, which was amazing to see, sadly the sea wasn't as great as we both got stung loads by little jellyfish and were in loads of pain. We decided to go to the next beach, but we could still see all the jellyfish, so we gave up and headed to Hot Water Beach.

Once the tide goes out on Hot Water Beach you find a warm bit of sand and dig a big hole. Hot water then seeps up through the sand (something to do with lava flows underground) this results in a hot bath. We did this about 10pm, it was so surreal lay in hot water at night under the stairs. As im sure you all know this is where Dan proposed 😊 we were sat in our own hot spa looking at the stars when Dan asked me and of course I said yes. To celebrate we drank some champagne and ate some mussles which we had cooked in the sand, whilst under the stars.

The next day we headed for Raglan, not much to do we just went out for a celebratory meal and then headed down to Waitomo Caves the next day. Waitomo caves are a number of underground caves dotted throughout the countryside. The caves are famous for their glow-worms and the number of activities you can do whilst down there. We chose to do some black water rafting in a glow worm cave. It was so much fun, we had torches on our heads and floated around on rubber rings. When we all turned the torches off the lights from the glow worms were amazing. We had to jump off a waterfall backwards (that was pretty scary) and go down a big underground slide, luckily we didnt see any creepy crawlys. On our way out of Waitomo we stumbled across a rabbit shearing place, it was so random, 1 room was full of very fluffy rabbits, another full of very sad sheared rabbits and another was where the weird and slightly scary woman sheared the poor rabbits. We resisted buying any rabbit fur clothing and quickly left.

Our next main stop was Rotorua, which we loved. The only down side to this place is that it stinks. Rotorua has many geysers, hot springs and mud pools, which causes a lot of sulphur to be in the air, which stinks of rotten eggs. I spent our first day there accusing Dan of constantly pumping and shouting at him, then I read the Lonely Planet which explained it, I kept this quiet for a while. Our first activity was luging, down hill go karting, where you can pick up some high speeds. It was brilliant and loads of fun, so we had 5 goes. Each time you reach the bottom you are transported back via a ski lift. Dan kept beating me so on our last go I decided to ram him off the track 😊. Our next activity was zorbing, for those who dont know what this is, its being pushed down a big hill in a big inflatable hamster ball. Me and Dan went in 1 together which had water in so we could slide around. Again this was great and Dan giggled like a girl all the way down. Our final activity was White water rafting, this was absolutely amazing and is one of the best things ive done whilst travelling. We went down grade 5 rapids, waterfalls and even 1 waterfall which was 7metres, the largest commercially raftable waterfall possible. Our guide decided to stick me at the front of the raft and get everyone to paddle into a waterfall, I got absolutely soaked, but it was so much fun.

Our next main activity was the Tangoriro Alpine crossing, this is described as NZ best 1 day hike and crosses volcanoes, active craters and beautiful lakes. It took us 61/2hrs in total (19k) ... personally I think Dan is regretting proposing and is trying to kill me off. It was quite tough in places and at 1 point we accidentally started climbing mount Ngaurohoe (Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings) as we were following the eager beavers. This was short lived as we realised the normal route was tough enough. The views were amazing and at some points we were 2000m above sea level and surrounded by snow, which made it clear we were under equipped in our pumps and shorts as everyone else had proper hiking gear including boots and sticks. Even though I hate walking this was an amazing experience, that night we headed to Wellington to catch our ferry to the South island.

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