We arrived in Taupo last night, met up with the old crowd from our first bus and had an early night because we had to get up 5am the next day to climb a mountain/volvcano (I'm still not entirely sure!). So 5am came and I'm as grouchy as I am at that time in the morning, luckily Charlotte's not the best morning person either so we just got on the bus and crashed out on the way there. Every so often on the way I'd wake up to the bus driver telling us about how to ...

Arrived in Waitomo today - there's nothing around and looks dead but they have all these underground caves.....so we went abseiling, black water rafting and caving! It was a lot of fun but soooo cold! First you abseil 100ft down into the cave and then you zip slide in the pitch black further down into the cave. The whole cave is filled with glow worms (which [boring fact alert!] are actually fly larva burning their crap away - kinda spoils the magic when you kno...

OK - I'm now In Rotorua...journey to get here has been fun. Most of Tues was spent traveling but we stopped off at a couple of great bays - Stingray Bay and Cathedral Cove. The weather wasn't good (pics of me in my Alton Towers mac!) which was a shame but probably a good thing as I wouldn't have wanted to leave the place.....we then had a stop off at Mercury Bay overnight which was film and early night for us all! We then headed into Rotorua, visited a really pr...

Hello! Just arrived back in Auckland from the Bay of Islands and Cape....had a fab time, everyone on the trip is cool and the place was beautiful! I've been on a speedboat trip round the bays, surfed down huge sand dunes (which went down really well with the contacts!!), up to the uppermost tip of the islands and on a dolphin boat tour...we were supposed to swim with them but there were 2 young and they were feeding so we could only watch but WOW! Didn't get man...

Ok - I made it in one piece! The flight was loooooong and uncomfotable and I didn't expect the running from one plane to another in Bangkok & Sydney but finally flew over NZ and the place looked just like a set from the Tellytubbies - SOOO green everywhere, was stunning. I got to the hostel at about 2 in the afternoon and crashed out for 12 hours! Only problem with that was at 2 in the morning I was wide awake sitting up in my bed, with nothing to do! Plan t...