Super super early start... Followed by a long cold bus journey and then a long ferry ride which was okay because it went fast as we were all talking so much. Then we arrived in Picton... Yay South island!!! We met the new magic bus driver Soap who seemed pretty cool then set off for Nelson. On the way we stopped at a winery for some tasting which would have been really fun, but it was closed!! Instead we bought fudge which made us all feel sick then got back ...

Woke up this morning to find out that at midnight the Tongarra volcano had erupted for the first time in 100years.... And that of course this volcano was pretty close to where we were staying. Luckily, the wind was blowing the other way so all the ash got blown that way and the damage had also fell the other side so we were okay to carry on going. We were heading down to Wellington today, which is the capital city and is where we would get our ferry to take us ...

Finally have the hearing back in my right ear... Thank god!!! Another early start as we're heading down to Waitomo today then on to the national park. In Waitomo there are loads of deep caves that you can walk through, go white water rafting in, abseil down or even go tubing in which is what we all decided to do. Tubing is where your in not very deep water and you have a big rubber tyre that you sit on and float through the cave. The reason these caves are suc...

This morning was an early start for all of us except Vanessa as we'd all booked to go see the hot pools and a famous geyser. First of all we stopped at a mud pool where we could stop and take pictures but weren't allowed in as the natural temperature is really hot. This part of New Zealand is covered in naturally occurring hot pools and hot springs and a geyser is where the hot water has built up underground and eventually erupts. From there we went to the Lady ...

7am and I'm up and ready to go get my first magic bus of many... I met the driver, Amanda, who Tamra had told me was one of the best so that was really good. Then on the bus I met Alice, Tim, Lucy and Vanessa all from England who all seemed really nice, then I also met Ricardo from Brazil, a couple from Ireland and three people from Taiwan. We were driving from Auckland down to Rotorua today and our first stop was Shire's Rest which is also known as Hobbiton :D...