This morning Laura felt a lot better and we hit State Highway 35 again, passing some more amazing coastal scenery along the way. We stopped a few times, once at a lovely church on a cliff edge at Raukobore Bay to take a few photos, and again at another beach further along the coast. At each stop we were joined by two girls travelling together and a guy travelling on his own, both driving cars rather than vans and both clearly following the same route as us! There...

Today was a very sad day as when we went on the internet after breakfast I found out that my old school friend Danielle had died after a battle with cancer. She has 2 daughters, one only a few months old. It's so sad and was on my mind all day. RIP Danielle. We left Rotorua today and headed towards the East Cape where we would spend the next few days driving around the Cape from Opotiki to Gisborne. After stopping at a picnic spot for lunch we arrived in Opotiki...

Today we decided to have a cheaper day after spending quite a bit of money on Hobbiton and the Maori day. So we decided to take advantage of the free stuff we could do in Rotorua! The Lonley Planet came in handy again as it had a walking tour of the city, so we headed into town, drove around a bit to find a place to park, then found free parking in the Government Gardens, which was where our tour started anyway. In the gardens was the Rotorua Museum, an impressi...

Today we got up early and headed to a living thermal maori village called Whakarewarewa in time for the 10am tour. We bought combo tickets which included the tour, a traditional hangi lunch (food cooked in steam boxes in the ground) and a traditional maori cultural show (our first!). Our guide for the tour was called Manoa and we learned the history of the village and about some of the famous guides - tours have been given there for hundreds of years. The villa...

This mornign, we set off from our campsite for Matamata, otherwise known as Hobbiton from the LOTR and upcoming Hobbit films! We arrived at about 11:30 and booked our selves onto the next tour ($66 each!!) leaving from The Shires Rest cafe, which is on the sheep farm owned by the Alexander brothers, where the set is based. Dave was very excited as it approached tour time! We got onto the bus and our guide drove us the short distance over the hill to where the se...