It's very windy in Wellington! We have been here for two days now, and we have been getting battered by the wind, and rain, quite a bit! Although it is the capital of New Zealand it doesn't seem to have the feel of a capital city, and it seems quite small in comparison to Auckland. We started off our stay in Wellington by attempting to get the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens to view the city and its harbour from above, but the cable car was closed for maint...

We could smell Rotorua before we even arrived! Because it's situated in a geothermal area, and there is still a lot of activity, the smell of sulphur hangs in the air. Nice! Rotorua is quite a popular area to learn about and experience maori culture, so we visited Te Puia, a maori arts and cultural centre, which also houses the Pohutu Geyser. We took a guided tour,which gave us an insight into traditional maori arts and crafts, such as wood carving and weaving, a...

Hello everybody, we've had a busy week and have seen a lot of the North Island. We left Auckland and drove straight up to Paihia which is in the Bay of Islands, at the northeast section of the North Island. We had fairly good weather, and made the most of it and did a boat tour around the islands, and saw some killer whales too! We had expected to see some dolphins, but instead we saw the whales, which was fantastic. When whales are in the Bay the dolphins disapp...

We made it to New Zealand! After a 12 hour long, turbulent night flight that involved little sleep, a lot of puking on Katie's part, and a bizarre flight attendant who resembled a cross between William Shatner and Dale Winton we arrived at Auckland,feeling like crap. We got to the city centre at 10am but had to wait 4 hours to check into our hotel so we tried to stay awake by visiting the lovely Albert Park and chilling out on the grass in the sunshine (which isn...