After an eventful last night in Wellington I was up at 5.30am after very little sleep, to get showered and have breakfast by 6.45am in order to take the short 10 minute walk from the Wellywood Backpackers where I was staying to the YHA hostel which is where the Kiwi Experience bus was picking us up from at 7am! We were picked up from outside the YHA by Bex who was to be my bus driver for the day, but we weren't picked up in a typical Kiwi bus, we were picked up i...

We didn't depart River Valley until midday, however we had to check out at 10am still which meant we were waiting around in the lounge area for two hours twiddling our thumbs (well I went on my net book) while two people from the bus were out horse trekking with Poncey, who was to be my driver for the second day running! One American chap decided he wanted to play the nine hole golf course, which was more like pitch and putt as all the holes were all par 3 and it...

We were treated to a bit of a lie in for the second departure in a row as we left Taupo at 9.30am! It was my first day on the bus with Poncey the bus driver, and in actual fact he was really good, a lot better than Ma my previous driver! Poncey seemed to have everything under control and he was up for a laugh yet was knowledgeable and always let us know what we were going to be doing for the day! I also got on the bus only knowing one person who had also stayed i...

We left Waitomo at approximately 10am today which was a reasonable departure time compared to some recent ones! The first thing we did was get the bus down to Ruakuri reserve to do the walk that a few of us on the bus had done the day before but it was an enjoyable walk so we were more than happy to do it again, especially as most of the people on the bus hadn't done it! We had about 40 minutes wandering around the reserve before we all piled back on the bus, whi...

It was an 8.30am pick up from BASE hostel in Rotorua, as we set out for the day towards Waitomo! I truly hadn't realised what I had let myself in for though regarding the driver of the bus however! His nickname was Ma, so that's what we called him, and he is by far the worst driver I have had on the Kiwi Experience, he was truly awful, but it was not as though I hadn't been warned because I the people I spoke to the night before that had been travelling with him ...