For a change we made it to our destination in daylight hours. That said, we didn't anticipate getting to Taupo to find that on public holidays, NZ has ridiculous laws on the sale of alcohol. No nights out here then... Taupo is home to NZ largest lake which sits in the caldera of a volcano which began erupting hundreds of thousands of years ago. And still being a volcanically active area, we were in store for more geothermal activity like the pools. They say it...

I think we were a little slow on the uptake with our trip planning, because once again, we left Raglan late afternoon with a good 150km of driving ahead of us before we reached Rotorua. We must have been suckers for punishment with the whole searching for a place to stay by nightfall lark. Bypassing Hamilton, the industrial capital of NZ according to our bible we were heading inland where we could make our beeline to the south. As we approached the infamous sulph...

Having briefly experienced life north of Auckland we decided against spending an extra couple of days driving to the northern tip of NZ (North Cape) - so were back behind the wheel and making up impressive ground. Looking back, the eternity it seemed to take to decide some sort of rough island crossing route, wasn't really that long at all. Baring in mind our total lack of organisation and having only been in possession of our lonely planet guide for 48hrs; 2 day...

New Zealand got off to a cracking start. We landed at 4am in Auckland and managed to leave the airport at 4pm. That's some effort right?! Keeping up with our garbage organisation of the trip, we hadn't even spared a moment's thought into how when or what we would do once in NZ. Cue THE LONELY PLANET ROUGH GUIDE and football manager. Eventually we tired of the game and decided to make some enquiries about campervans. Well actually the two helpful girls behind the ...

New Zealand got off to a cracking start. We landed at 4am in Auckland and managed to leave the airport at 4pm. That's some effort right?! Keeping up with our garbage organisation of the trip, we hadn't even spared a moment's thought into how when or what we would do once in NZ. Cue THE LONELY PLANET ROUG GUIDE and football manage. Eventually we tired of the game and decided to make some enquiries about campervans. Well actually the 2 helpful girls behind the desk...