Today we travelled to Rotorua and stopped off at Hamilton gardens on the way through. They were excellent with loads to see, we could have spent all day here. We saw two sets of gardens, one was called Paradise gardens which was a collection representing classical styles from Japanese zen to American modern. The Indian garden was our fav. We also saw the productive gardens including a Maori inspired garden and a pretty decent kitchen garden. We arrived at Rotorua...

Today we watched Wales narrowly beat Samoa in Hamilton (photo is of the Samoans doing their haka!). And the second miracle of the day was that it didn't rain for the whole match! The town was full of groups of Samoan fans (biggest guys I've ever seen) and welsh with some of the best hats and outfits of the tournament so far! The atmosphere at the games has been awesome so far and we're looking forward to the south pacific derby next Sunday in Auckland! We headed ...

Can anyone guess what our picture is of today?! If you look closely (very closely!) there is a glow worm in this pic! Thankfully we got some much better photos from our Waitomo glow worm caves black water rafting experience! We arrived early to get into our sexy wetsuits and helmets etc then headed off to get some abseiling lessons. Then we went to one of the cave entrances to lower ourselves 37 meters down a hole! We then experienced a flying fox (zip line) in ...

This morning we took in a bit of Pukekura park in new Plymouth before setting off to Waitimo. Great city park with so much to do and so little time! Defo a place to have your camera at the ready! We then stopped off in Otorohanga to go to the kiwi house there. It was amazing, I love the kiwis, they're just so cute! We also saw other birds like moreporks, got chased by wekas and got attacked by a brown teal (it had some babies it was taking good care of!). We saw ...

Today we drove back to New Plymouth on the forgotten world highway for the USA v Russia game. Great game, shame about the weather!! Don't think I've ever been that wet at a rugby game before even while watching Sale! Still, it was a good excuse for us all to go to the nearest Irish pub (thanks to Steve and Nat!) and put the world to rights before grabbing a kebab-classic!