Our two days in Wellington were spent admiring the views from Mount Victoria, watching the Sheep cam in the Te Papa museum and catching the cable car up to the Observatory and botanical gardens.
James even managed to persuade Em to go on a Lord of The Rings tour, and despite the torrential rain we still pretended to be Hobbits in some scenes, before heading to the Weta Cave. This is where the special effects company that worked on Lord of The Rings and Avatar, among others, is based.
From windy and wet Wellington we ventured north to Taihape. Here we had a rather adventure filled day. We started with two hours of grade 5 white water rafting. This was an awesome, but also hilarious experience. Luckily no one fell out, although Em managed to lose a paddle half way down a rapid!!! From here we headed to Gravity Canyon, where we arrived intending to do the flying fox. After some persuasion, the staff and James got Em to do the worlds highest tandem swing instead! This involved being hung off the edge of an 80m bridge then released into a 50m free fall! After our video failed the first time round we got an offer to do it again for free, luckily this time the video worked! You will all get to see this in due course!
The next was a big day. We got up at 6am to embark on the 20km Tongariro Alpine Crossing, one of the worlds top ten day walks! It was amazing!!! The first half was a steep ascent to Red Crater at 1900m above sea level. Some of this was made tricky by the large amount of frozen snow and ice on the track. The views along the way of the surrounding volcanoes and lakes were breathtaking. On our way back down one of the Volcanoes started emitting large amounts of smoke!
Our next stop was Taupo, the second largest lake in NZ and also an active volcano. Here we did a skydive. After kitting ourselves out and posing for our videos we hopped into the pink plane and ascended to 15,000ft. Here the roller door opened... Em was first up and despite being absolutely petrified beforehand, loved it! Meanwhile James took the opportunity to pull some funny faces on the way down and managed to shake the foot of the cameraman. The view from this height during our 60 second free fall was incredible. After safely landing on our bums and getting our heart rates back to normal we visited the Huka falls and Volcanic activity centre.
The next day we started by watching the Lady Knox geyser erupt at Wai-o-tapu thermal park. We then wandered around the rest of the park in the pouring rain before heading up to Rotorua for our Moari Cultural evening and meal. This began with a brief introduction by our guide before watching the local tribe arrive on a waka (canoe). We then headed to the performance area, where we learnt about Moari weapons, instruments, facial tattoos and other parts of their culture. Next up was our hangi meal; nice roast lamb, chicken, kumara, other vegetables and gravy.... Yum! To finish our evening we went on a short bush walk to see the glowworms at the fairy springs.
Glowworms were the major attraction of the next morning as we visited Waitomo glowworm caves. On the boat hjourney at the end of our tour we were able to see hundreds of glowworms lighting up the ceiling like the starry night sky. From here we headed up to the Coromandel peninsula. Whilst here we stopped at Thames, Coromandel Town and Whitianga. We started the next day watching the sunrise at Haihie beach before walking to Cathedral Cove. We then headed down the east coast of the peninsula stopping at a few beaches and a gorge along the way, before driving up to the Bay of islands, north of Auckland.
On our way to the Bay of Islands we made a quick stop at the Hundertwasser toilets. These were his last pieceof artwork before he died, and they are pretty impressive toilets! Having arrived in Paihia we boarded our boa for the afternoon. This boat trip took us on a short tour of some of the 144 islands in the Bay and included a stop at 'Hole in the Rock'. We were also meant to heave a swim with dolphins (our second attemtpt), however, yet again, we saw no dolphins and were very disappointed!
From the Bay of Islands we drove down to Auckland for our last day in New Zealand. Here we took in some of the view from One Tree Hill and Achilles Point, before heading into the city centre.
Now it's time for us to say goodbye to our campervan and New Zealand and we will catch up with you all when we reach South America!
Much love
x x x
ps Less than 50 days til we land back in the UK....hope you're all excited!!
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