We took a 2 hr bus down from taupo to Hastings last night. There we met with my cousins George and Sammy as well as Sammys fiance David - them getting married is the main reason we're in NZ. We had some mexican food and caught up as I had not seen them in ages and maz had never met them. Today we've been updating this blog and planning our South Island trip and are picking up our rent-a-dent car at 4pm. It's a load cheaper/easier to hire budget cars here than i...

We have spent the past few days with Pedro's uncle Chris who lives in Taupo & he has been showing us some of the sights in the area. He has shown us loads in a small amount of time! We saw various places, such as Maori places, steaming craters, prawn farm, honey farm, played some mini gol, red woods and saw some sulphur lakes. As New zealand's North Island is basically a land of volcanoes, lots of steam constantly rises out of the ground caused by the hot l...

We arrived in Auckland at 05:30 this morning. We got a cheap bus straight to our hostel and managed to check in for 07:00!!! Awesome! It meant we could get straight to sleep and then wake up refreshed in time for lunch. Which is what we did. Walking around our local surroundings to get a feel for where we were. Our first impressions were that we were in some weird mix of England, Germany and Singapore. We sat down in a food court and ate a Thai green curry and a...

We just have one day left until we drop the car off and head for NZ. On the way back to LA we decided to stop off via the grande canyon, hover dam and LAS VEGASto do some shopping. We saw/got some rad stuff and it was a great end to our US travels. We spending tonight looking round Santa Monica and making media connections. Are next blog will be from the lord of the rings land!!!

Just before crossing the boarder from Colorado to New Mexico we stumbled upon a random drive in Cinema which we just had to take advantage of. There were two options on the menu, The Simpsons Movie (which we had seen in Colorado) and Transformers. We ordered with the latter. With our home made chicken ranch and salad sandwhiches in hand that we'd pieced together from supplies bought at a market we tuned our radio into the correct frequency and sat back to enjoy ...