We left the East Cape yesterday and headed for the Coromandel Peninsula. It was not the most interesting drive but we did pass a giant kiwi fruit! The Coromandel peninsula is lovely. We are staying in Hahei, which is a really nice beach town. It takes us about a minute to walk to the beach! We went for a quick swim yesterday. The beach gets huge waves so we had fun splashing about in the surf. Today we walked along the coast to Cathedral cove, which is this gorgeous cove, which has a huge natural arch. You can walk though the arch to another beach. In the afternoon we went to Hot Water Beach, which is a beach that has hot springs under the sand. This mean you can build yourself a hot tub! In some ... read more

We are now in Rotorua and doing more extreme things! We went zorbing today. Zorbing involves being in a large plastic ball and rolling down a hill! Think giant hamster ball and you get the idea. Tim and I went in the same ball together along with a bucket of water (don't know why). They tell you to stand and then release the gate so you start rolling. We tried to stay standing but it was impossible. Felt a bit dizzy by the time I got to the bottom of the hill but it was good fun. I am sure this is what being in a washing machine feels like! In the afternoon we went to the Polynesian Spa which is a series of hot pools. The main pool is a mineral pool which is kept ... read more

We did the Tongariro Crossing today. It is a 17km hike that takes you across several craters and by the side of a volcano. The superfit people can hike up this as an aside to the main track! The hike, although hard going in places, was excellent. There were really good views and the scenery was amazing. A lot of this area was used in Lord of the Rings and we saw "Mt Doom". The hike involved two really steep climbs. They were far more of a climb than I was expecting but we both made it after lots of scrambling! The weather was so changeable in the mountains. I had never seen anything like it. When we got to the south crater it was clear blue skies. Within a couple of minutes the whole crater ... read more

We are in Napier now which is famous for its Art Deco architecture amongst other things. The place was destroyed by an earthquake in 1931 so when it was rebuilt it was in the Art Deco style. It does make it a very nice city to walk around especially as I really like that style of architecture and there are lots of shops selling nice things from that period. We drove here today in our new hire car. We have gone up in the world, due to a free upgrade, so we now have a silver Nissan Bluebird. I have not tried driving it yet but Tim seems to like it especially as it has a bit of power and seems able to accelerate up hills unlike the last car! On the Drive here from Wellington ... read more

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!! I hate the weather! We did not get to do our swimming with dolphins yesterday as it was too windy! It was not that windy in town but apparently it was very windy out to sea and a trip that had gone out earlier had to come back early. The thing that made it all the more irritating was the fact that we had booked it months ago before we left the UK as they get booked up weeks and weeks in advance. We think we will try and go somewhere in the North Island. We did go on a really good walk around the Kaikoura Peninsular though. It was a loop walk that took you along the shoreline then back along the cliff top. There were loads of seagulls (black-billed and red-billed) nesting on ... read more