We drove (yet another) picturesque route north from Mangawhai to Russell, which is the old capital of New Zealand. It's just over the water from Waitangi where the original treaty between the representatives of Queen Victoria and the Maori was signed. Russell is quaint and full of old wooden buildings. We stayed in a very deluxe complex of holiday homes where we had our own 4 bedroom house (they lock the bedrooms you are not using) and not only did we have a ...

From Waitomo we head north, whizz through Auckland (saving it for another day) and drive by on incredibly busy roads, the like of which we've not encountered since Bangkok; we encounter our first traffic jam and are slightly overwhelmed by the number of cars - we haven't seen this many cars in our last 4 weeks in this country in total. The traffic in New Zealand has got busier as we have progressed from the south to the north. When we arrived even Christchurch ...

On our way north we stopped in Waitomo to visit some glow-worm caves. They are amazing. We drove for about 45 minutes through some stunning scenery, along some precarious dirt roads winding up and down the hills until we got to the caves. We had to don classy little Bob the Builder hats with a head torch fastened to the front and then walk deep into a very dark cave, using only our little head torches to navigate. At the end of the cave walk we hit water, so ...

Our time recently has been split between ticking off the various tourist sights on our itinerary and, in Brian's case, dealing with a recalcitrant accountant in the UK who has only just dusted off the accounts we sent him in October in preparation for filing them by the end of January. Naturally there are errors, questions and omissions all of which coincidentally appear to be not in our favour, and it is a little difficult to deal with them when we have a 13 ho...

On February 3rd 1931 a huge earthquake hit Napier. Unluckily for them it almost totally flattened the town and killed at least 256 people. Luckily for their future status as one of the top tourist spots in the North Island, almost all of it was rebuilt over the next couple of years at a time when the prevailing style of architecture was art deco. It is, therefore, chock a block with charmingly preserved buildings, decorative features, paraphernalia and other a...