Woke up to a very drizzly day and left Taupo quite early. So early in fact that we were at Rotorua right at 10am. It was only a 76 km drive but lots of traffic on the road as it is the last long weekend in NZ before Christmas. It is the Labour day weekend for New Zealanders. We got to our campground and set up then explored the camp as there is lots of geothermal activity here. You can walk to the beach and dig a hole in the sand and it will fill with hot water. ...

Woke up to a pretty cold morning at Ohakune so we had a hot breakfast. We decided to go shopping before we left as there was a merino wool outlet store in town where prices were 50% off already rock bottom prices. Gary, Jean and I all bought some articles. I am very happy with what I got and will stay nice and warm when we return to winter time in Canada. We visited the local chocolate eclair shop again before leaving Ohakune. Just down the highway at Waiouru, we...

We were up by 7am and ready for breakfast when we discovered the kitchen in our campground was locked. Someone finally woke up the owners but we had decided to forego a hot breakfast and had cereal and toast. Then we set off on Highway 4 for Ohakune and Tongariro National park. The trip was very interesting as it was a very winding and narrow highway. We passed many "slips" or small landslides along the steep route. We had to go by a works crew with a dump truck ...

We left New Plymouth early and meandered south to Whanganui. When we were close to Whanganui and because it was lunchtime we went to Bason Botanical Gardens which turned out to be a real treat. The gardens had flowers from all over the world. We ended up spending about 2 hours there. We stopped at the NZAA to pick up some better maps than we had and then we contacted Father Robert MacPherson and had a really delightful dinner with him at a local restaurant. Spent...

We got up early again and went to Waitomo Caves early so that we could get the better tour. We arrived right at 9am but managed to get on the first tour. As it turned out there was only one other person so we had a pretty personalized tour. The tour was quite fascinating looking at some of the stalactites which were 3-4 meters long and the being told that they grow at a rate of cm per 100 years. We also saw the glow worms - they seemed like thousands of stars in ...