Hi, Writing this from Hanmer Springs on the South Island. After our last blog have we visited a Mauri museum and watched some traditional Mauri singing and dancing and the Haka! They also had a couple of Kiwi's there (the bird) which were very cute. We then made our way to Wellington by coach and stayed in our first dorm room. In Wellington we went on a Lord of the Rings tour to where a lot of the scees from the Shire were filmed and we also went to the Weta Cav...

Hello White water rafting was brilliant! We had so much fun, and I jumped off a small waterfall which I'm very proud of! We have some good pictures on CD from the company so we'll try to put them up if we find a CD thing somewhere. Chris has decided that he wants to take up rafting as his new hobby! This picture is where we were today, boiling mud pools in a thermal area. Very smelly (because of the sulphur they give off that smells like rotten eggs!) but quite...

Hello! We are back in New Zealand, down in Mervyn's timeshare by the lake Taupo which is very nice. We had a trip around the mountains/ volcanoes yesterday in the national park and Chris went up the ski lift to the top of what was Mordor in the Lord of the Rings films. We had cream tea in the Chateau, which I think Grandad might have done as well? White water rafting on the river this afternoon! We've been wall climbing as welll here which was fun, Chris made ...

Hi! We're just going to bed now, we've got a really early start tomorrow for our flight to Samoa. Yesterday on the boat was awesome and definitely a highlight of our trip so far! It was a 42ft yacht owned by a really nice and very well-off couple! We motored to a nearby island, Kawau, and Glennis took us for a walk through the bush which was lovely and we saw a close relation to the Kiwi bird, think it's called a wacker or something, couldn't quite decipher th...

Hi. We're off sailing on one of Mervyn's friends yacht today, called the Arctic Lady. Hopefully the weather will be better than in this photo! Should have a bigger update tonight or tomorrow with NZ photos. Happy Birthday mum! Chris