I've now made it safely back home and am writing this whilst waiting for the floods to go away - we've had a couple of feet in places. It's nice to be home and not having to pack/unpack every other day now!

I didn't do my skydive in the end - spent 2 days waiting to do it, one was too windy the other too cloudy. however I did have some fantastic weather to do the Tongariro Crossing, through the volcanoes of the North Island. It had snowed for about a week then the weather cleared up and it was a perfect sunny day for it.

After that I hitched up to Rotorua and spent a couple of days there getting used to the rotten egg smell due to all the volcanic activity - lots of steaming pools all around the town and steam coming out of the drains on the road! Also went to a thermal park full of mud pools, craters, geysers etc etc. Very unusual.

I then hired a car for the rest of my time in NZ, drove from Rotorua to Waitomo Caves to go black water rafting in the caves. Great fun floating down an underground river on an inner tube in the pitch black, jumping off underground waterfalls, seeing all the glow-worms.

After Waitomo I went on a bit of an epic road trip driving all the way up to the north most point, Cape Reinga. Slept in the car there so managed to watch the sunrise from the light house then drove all the way back to Auckland. Had a night out in Auckland with some people from the hostel and then it was off to the airport.

I wish I'd done the North Island first as the south was so spectacular it put most of the north island to shame! Even though it's got some great scenery itself. Just a lot more like Wales so not quite so breath taking as the South.

Left Auckland at 6pm on the Sat and got to San Francisco at 4pm on the Sat! San Francisco was a really ncie city, great to have sunny hot weather and also for it to be getting dark at 9pm instead of 5pm! I kept going out sight seeing not paying attention to the time and getting back at 10pm, thinking it would be about 6pm...

The city completely changed my sterotypical american image - I only saw 1 MacDonalds in 4 days and there was a lot more individual & unique culture there and no tackiness, though I'm sure if I went to LA it would be different. Hired a bike one day and cycled over the Golden Gate bridge and around the contryside north of the city. Also went shopping and marvelled at how cheap clothes are over there, not far off half what we pay here thanks to the pound.

Got back on Thursday just in time for these floods! Plan is to get a job in the local pub till Sept when I think I will be moving to Luton for 6 months at GKN's aerospace site there.

Hope everyone enjoyed the posts of my travels, only seems the other day I was packing to leave etc. Next trip is going to involve Asia and South America!

Signing off, Simon