North Island (and a bit of the south!)

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So, we only had a few days left on the south island after the last blog update, one of which was spent at Milford Sound - absolutely gorgeous scenery. Our next stop after Queenstown was the rather sedate Twizel, the nearest big(ish) town to Mount Cook. Twizel was almost a ghost town and I think we were the only ones actually staying at the hostel - this was quite a different experience after Queenstown! We got dropped off in Mount Cook village and took a walk closer to the mountain. Next stop was Christchurch (again), followed by Kaikoura (again), where I did manage to go whale watching. Next stop would be on the north island...

We took the ferry from Picton to Wellington, New Zealand's capital, and spent the next day visiting the tourist sites - we went to Te Papa museum and saw the collossal squid and took the cable car to a viewpoint over Wellington and the Botanical Gardens.

Our next stop was Taupo where we had our first experience of some of thermal wonders of New Zealand - hot springs. We also caught a glimpse of Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings. Next was Rotorua, the thermal capital of NZ, which permanently stank thanks to all the sulphur pools. Here we also saw some geysers and spent the evening at a Maori cultural village to experience the Haka.

The next day we went Black Water Rafting, which isn't rafting at all. We abseiled into the Waitomo cave network, we then went tubing along the river and saw thousands of glow worms. Next we were crawling through the caves with water flowing all around us, then had to climb up some waterfalls to get back to the surface - good times!

Next we visited NZ's biggest city - Auckland. There wasn't much to do here, but we went up the Sky Tower for the views over Auckland.

We also spent a few days further north in Paihia and took a bus trip to the very north of the north island - Cape Reinga.

Some pictures from the north island...

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