Hello everyone, I am now well into my travels around the south Island and am having a great laugh as not only have the majority of the group I travelled the North Island with stayed together but I have also met a lot of great new people. W have now been through Westport but nothing of major note happened there although we did take a ride on a jet boat which was quite a good laugh. Yesterday we were at Lake Mahinapua where we were all looking forward to the on inf...

The 3hr ferry ride from Wellington to Picton on the south island was a little bit more interesting than the channel crossing! It was a winding path and the scenery was like something out of the Lost World. After arriving at Picton we made our way to Nelson and the Abel Tasman National Park, where we were going to spend the next 3 nights. On arrival we decided we were going to go camping in the Abel Tasman National Park the next night so everyone was really excite...

Hello everyone. This is my last night in what has been a really good weekend in the capital, Wellington. The whole group has found it to be much nicer than Auckland, everything is much more compact and there is a nice vibe about the place. Over the weekend I haven't really done anything that exciting I am afraid. Yesterday we had a look around the city centre at all the shops and I stocked up on my collection of T-shirts. In the evening the whole group got to...

Have just arrived in Wellington and will now be here for the next 3 nights, after which we take the ferry and make our way to the South Island. Yesterday we left Taupo and made our way to River Valley, a really nice place in the middle of nowhere with just the one hostel. The place was like it had been purpose built for a Cozens you hostel trip! On the way we stopped at Tangariro national park where a lot of Lord of the Rings had been filmed and I got a photo in ...

The last few days have been absolutely brilliant. Left our really nice hostel at 7:45am to head out for a 5 hour caving session at the Waitomo caves. Once we were kitted out in full on wet suit, helmet aand funky shoes we abseiled 35m down a drop to get into the caves. The two guys taking us around were Dunnie and Randy and were a right laugh. Once in the cave we went on a flying fox which took us even further under ground. We were then treated to some tea and bi...