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First of all, apologies for the lack of blogs lately.....blame it on new zealand, there's just too much to do there!! We have just been having the best time and with email being pretty expensive, the blogs have definitely taken a back seat in things!

Well, we left South America, gladly, although we had a class time there, the spanish really was a strain and we were ready for a modern country with toilet roll flushing toilets, English speaking people, tourist information and the main thing was a car.....let's say a big goodbye to the 20 hour buses for a while! The flight wasn't too bad, slept most of it...pretty used to long journeys by now and have mastered the skill of being comfortable with long, boring sessions of sitting about with nothing to do, whilst waiting to get somewhere.

We arrived in Auckland and stayed with Dave, the kiwi guy we met in mexico's parents. Mary and Brian were so nice to us and we had the best time there. We were also glad of the company as for the most of Central and South America, it was just me and David on our lonesome! Not too many travellers in those parts anyway. Dave also lent us his car which was fantastic...free transport all around the north island and was also very interesting at times...i.e brokendoor which let the wind in so we couldn't hear eachother talk, broken wingmoore and a big problem with the battery as everytime we went to start the car, David had to get out (mostly in the rain), open the bonnet and fiddle with the battery until it started!!! hahaha!!! Good times! Message for Dave Wedlock...think it's due its mot...haha!

First of all, we headed up north to the Bay of Islands! It was absolutely beautiful up there, lots of little islands dotted around the sea and the water was sparkling blue for as far as the eye could see. We stayed in Pahia and caught the ferry across to Russell, a lovely little fishing village. The following day, we took a tour on a cruise boat round the islands which were beautiful but unfortunately, we picked a bad day for the cruise as it was quite rainy and windy and although there is a 95% chance of seeing dolphins and whales, we happened to be out on the day of the 5% chance of not seeing any! We drove back down the west coast towards Auckland and the drive was amazing. The North Island is so lush and green...bit like home only New Zealand looks like Postman Pat country as all of its hills constantly look as though someone had just mowed the grass the day before. There is also very little traffick outside the main towns and we hardly ever met another car on the road. We drove in through Waipoua Kauri Forest, renowned for its large kauri trees. The largest living tree is Tane Mahuta which dwarfs anyone standing next to it. This tree stands over 50 metres high and has a trunk width of about 5 metres.

We drove back down to Auckland and spent a couple of days investigating the city and spent a day or two wandering around delightful suburbs of Milford, where Mary and Brian lived and the ferry port town of Devonport which had awesome views of the city at night!


Our next port of call was further south to Rotorua and Taupo. Rotorua is famous for its geysers and bubbling hot mudpools. The entire area stinks of sulphur and it is a huge geothermal area. All around, you can see huge amounts of steam rising from the ground. It really is quite amazing. We spent one day in Rotorua in which we saw the mud pools which were incredible and very Lord of the Ringsesq and we saw the exploding geysers. The water just starts spurting out very slightly and all of a sudden, just explodes and the water comes shooting out to about 6 meters high into the air and the whole surrrounding area becomes covered in steam from the hot water. We also went to a Mauri show in which we saw the dance traditions and games which were played by the Mauris and ofcourse the famous Haka was performed! Everytime, the Allblacks play a rugby game and it is on in a bar, everyone in the bar is silent for the Haka, even the bar men who are supposed to be serving drinks stop serving, and stand still to watch the Haka! Pretty cool! We also went to Matamata where New Line Cinema filmed the Shire for the Lord of the Rings! It was definitely a bit of a rip off for the tour but it was still interesting to see the hobbitholes which were so cute and hear all about the amount of work and effort that was put in to filming this section of Lord of the Rings.

From here, we drove around the Coromandel peninsula. The scenery was awesome...the road winds the whole way around the coast and on one side is the beach and the ocean and on the other is national parks...really beautiful! Basically just a few days of picnics, relaxing and touring around. We left though just in time as a tornado hit the following day knocking all the electricity out for the next few weeks!

Well, that brings our North Island tour of New Zealand to an end and from there, it was back to Auckland to catch the next flight to Queenstown in the South Island!

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