After a good night's sleep, we awoke to hear on the radio that the South African rugby team were due to be welcomed into Wellington at 10am. It was half 9, so we decided to down our cups of tea and head into town to see if we could see them! After a half hour drive down the motorway and struggling to find somewhere to park, we were sent to the Te Papa museum car park by the guy at Wellington Motorhome park. This was after he'd told us that it would cost $75 to p...

We left early this morning and somehow forgot(!) to go to the cafe to pay our camping fee, so we had a night's free camping! Our first stop was the New Zealand Rugby Museum in Palmerston North, where we learned about the history of rugby and saw some All Blacks memorabilia. After that we grabbed lunch in subway then headed for the Tui brewery for our tour. For the next few days we were going to be staying with Dave's Grandmas's sister Mary, who has lived in NZ f...

Today we planned to drive to Palmerston North, which wasn't a very long drive, so we decided to visit 'Craters of the Moon' which was a park with thermal activity and craters left over from eruptions. The walk took about an hour, and then we went to our favourite shop, Pak N Save, to stock up on supplies. As we started driving towards Palmerston North we passed the huge mountains, one of which was used as Mount Doom in the LOTR films (see picture). We stopped to...

This morning we set off to the swing site for my 11am swing! After reading the safety info and signing my life away on the waiver form, I went out to a ledge and a woman fastened me into the harness, while making small talk to make me feel less nervous! I then went down the steps to the swing point and a guy helped me into the swing 'seat', which was just a pad that goes under your legs, then I was attached to the rope above - no going back now! I actually honest...

I woke up at about 8am and got out to visit the toilet. As I did, I noticed a sheet of paper under our wipers - a note telling us we weren't allowed to camp there and if we weren't gone in the morning we'd be issued with a tresspassing notice! So we thought we'd better get going! We packed up quickly and hit the road - no time for breakfast! We drove south to Hastings and parked up. We visited the library to use the internet then went off to explore Hastings...t...