Hello everyone. Hope England's having nice weather, hahaha. Actually today is pretty cloudy here in Taupo (pronounced toe-paw). We were hoping to sunbathe by the lake, but maybe this afternoon! The lake here is the biggest in New Zealand. It is 60km wide. Apparently you can fit Singapore in it and still have room for a boat to go around the edge.

Anyway, I will tell you about what we have been doing since I last wrote in Christchurch, a week ago.

After we left Christchurch, which I have to say I wasn't that impressed with, just thought it was another city, we traveled to Kaikoura. It's a really good place to go swimming with dolphins and seals, but we were only there for one night and me and Becky decided we didn't really want to. So we just looked around the (small) town and watched Unbreakable at the hostel. We were pretty lucky cos we were one of the first to check in, so we got a double room for the same price as a dorm room. And it came with quilts and an ensuite. And there was no-one there to wake us up!!! But the only thing is I had to share a double bed with Becky. I had some really nice chips that night from a fish and chip shop that had won loads of awards. The weather was pretty bad that day.

From Kaikoura we headed up to Picton, where we got the ferry back to the North Island. Back in the North Island we stayed in Wellington again, for only one night this time. That evening we went to the cinema to see Hannibal: The Rising, it was pretty gross. We shared a room with 5 boys and they came back at about 4 in the morning, when we had to be up at 7am to catch the Kiwi Bus. They turned on the light and made loads of noise, not even trying to be quiet! Then, one of them in the morning had to cheek to tell us to shh when we were trying to pack our stuff away! We weren't even talking or turned on the light or anything! I was so mad so I just made more noise.

Then we were in Taupo for one night, back in exactly the same room we were in before. Then we got up early the next day to go on East As, it's a little extra thing that not many people do. It was so worth it though.

The first night we stayed in the middle of absolutely no-where, hours from civilisation. There was only about 10 of us on the bus and everyone was really nice and friendly. We stayed in the home of the O'Brien family, a Maori family who do homestays for backpackers. We sat in their hot tub all afternoon, well, Becky didn't, but everyone else did, drinking beers and watched the sun set over the Ocean. I got some amazing pictures as you will see. I also went in the sea for the first time in Nz, the Pacific Ocean, and it was nice and warm. In the evening the family prepared us a really really nice meal, with fish they had caught themselves, loads of vegetables, and meat they had hunted. The dad, or the 'chief' was so funny, he was absolutely crazy! There was a lot of them there, it was one of the boys 21st party the next day so there were loads of family and friends staying. After dinner they all performed a Maori song and dance, which was pretty amazing to watch. Like the rugby players we met, all Maori people can sing and play the guitar amazingly! It's really not fair. We were supposed to sing them a song but luckily they had to go back out to sea and collect a fishing line they left. So we just sung the boy happy birthday the next day. There was 12 of us in one room, and it was right by the chiller, so we had a really horrible smell of fish and raw meat wafting into our room all night.

The next day we went to the most Easterly point of New Zealand, again, hours from any sort of civilisation! We did bone carving and me and Becky each made a necklace for each other. Hers means that she will leave me but always come back, great! They had a table tennis table up in the sheep shearing area and some locals came down and they were probably ex champions because they were really talented! They played so hard that sweat was dripping off them! I thought I'd spare them the embarresment of me challenging them, because I'm quite hard to beat, lol. Although one of the boys on our trip, Matt, I challenged him, he won 3 times though. But he did own a table back home! That evening, Becky went to bed early, but the rest of us stayed up and played round robin with table tennis, it was so funny!

The next morning we woke at 6am to be amoung the first people in the world to see the sun rise, over the Ocean. It was really amazing, although Becky was texting on her phone the whole time it was rising.

That night we were in Napier, sadly we didnt really get a chance to look around but it's a really nice town (or they call it city). That area is really famous for wines. We went wine tasting, and drove down Church Road, apparently that's famous. That night we watched the film Whale Rider. Which is all about the Maori culture. And the tiny place (only about 15 buildings by a beach) where it was filmed we went to in the day. So it was really familiar. Although our Maori driver didn't want us to go down there because it was a bit disrespectful for a big green bus to go driving around there. But if you get the chance to watch it then that's where I went.

And now we're back in Taupo. The New Zealand Ironman contest was on this weekend, we just missed it. Apparently a woman was killed on her bike, she was just watching the Ironman and was it by a truck, only a day after we left, it's pretty sad!

Ok, I think I've written enough now. If you haven't already, don't forget to look at my pictures!