I was welcomed onto the bus this morning by a grumpy man who told me I was late. He was correct, but blunt. This is GP, Grumpy Pete, my driver for the next few days. He is so dry he makes the Sahara Desert look positively drenched. On the way to Rotorua we stopped at a gold mining valley to walk over some rickety bridges and take photos. The place was left for dead once the gold ran out. Let's start with an obvious fact: Roturoa stinks of rotten eggs. It has a ...

Well I've finally started my Kiwi Experience. The first thing we did was go to Mount Eden in case I missed anything two days ago. Actually, the first thing I did was realise that I'd left my phone and iPod charger at my hostel. It's apparently there for me to collect in two months... Anyway, it was then on to the Coromandel region for Hot Water Beach, where hot water comes out from the rocks into the sand and you can dig your own spa pool. It was ludicrously ove...

New Zealand! Found by the Dutch and left for the British to steal and ruin, as is their wont. All this colonialism is terrific stuff, by Jove. I left Australia - which we stole by less diplomatic means - on Valentine's Day, no less, and arrived in Auckland with two hours shaved off my oh-so-romantic day of flights and bag carrying. I also left my towel in Sydney. Whoops. The next day I started my quest to burn all of my holiday photos to DVDs. I took a wander ar...

You know when you arrive at your hostel on a Saturday night to find that it is actually quite literally a nightclub playing an unclassifiable noise that makes your entire fourteen-bed dorm shake until 2am? You know when that happens? No? You lucky b*****... So guess what happened on my first night back in Sydney (hint: see above)? Yep. I even went downstairs to the bar just to get a pint so I'd have a better chance of sleep. On the plus side, the beer was cheap,...

Ok, so I'm really in Wellington (New Zealand) as I write this, but let's pretend I'm not. Actually it doesn't matter where I am but more when: this all happened about 3 weeks ago... The bus did get to Cape Trib and it did get me out, though it might as well have been a boat as torrential rain continued and the roads were literally like rivers. My SLR was still out of action following yesterday's liberal dousing, so my old point-and-shoot took up the challenge. ...