Kiwiland

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Kia Ora!
I have hopped across the waters to the lovely land of the Kiwi and have enjoyed a beautiful couple of weeks exploring the North Island. I have been staying with some members of extended family, Mike and Tina, just North of Auckland and it has been wonderful to enjoy some home comforts for a little while.
I also took a Tiki tour around on a Stray bus visiting lots of amazing places en route: the Coromandel Peninsula (Cathedral Cove and Hot Water beach), the beautiful surf town of Raglan (New Zealand’s answer to Byron Bay), Waitomo Caves where I went black water tubing and spied many a glow worm, a night in a Maori meeting house where I watched the haka be performed...a scary performance given by some true Maori boys, and then a slightly more comical version performed by the male members of our tour group! Us girls learned to twirl the Poi. Then it was on to the smelly location of Rotorua with it’s bubbling mudpools and hot springs, I also gave Zorbing a go here! Next on to Taupo, where I resisted to temptation to jump out of a plane (not in my lifetime, thank you very much), then Tongariro National Park, home to Lord of the Rings’ Mount Doom. Here we stayed in a luxury lodge with spa pools and open wood fires, flashpacker eat your heart out! But I think I deserved it after doing the 19.4km hike of the Tongariro Crossing. Last stop was windy Wellington, where the highlight definitely had to be the Te Papa museum...this is a definite must see if you’re ever in Welly.
After the Stray tour it was back up to Auckland, where I was picked up and whisked straight back to Raglan for a day on the beach with Mike as he had a paragliding lesson down that way. The next day we had an early start as Mike had work up in the Northland, so he dropped me off in the Bay of Islands where I spent the day dolphin spotting, took a boat out to the famous hole in the rock, then hopped off at Russell to explore New Zealand’s first capital...difficult to believe that such a small little seaside town was once a bustling hub of activity - New Zealand’s biggest port no less! How times change.
Today I fly back to Melbourne and tomorrow we begin our big road trip across to the West Coast of Australia (there has been a slight change of plan since I last blogged.) We plan to head over towards Perth first, then up the West Coast to Darwin...not sure how far we’ll get in a month, but we’ll see how we go. Just over a month til I fly home and I can’t believe it’s almost been a year already!

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