From South to North

Our experience of cities here in New Zealand has been very different to what we have found in the countryside. The towns are all very new and not much is happening in them, it seems. Maybe we are missing something but so far the impression is - new, functional, provides the basics, has some charm but no real history or substance.

Strangely, the capital (Wellington) is the 3rd largest city in the country - Auckland has 1.4M inhabitants, Christchurch 350K and Wellington a few thousand less. Still, we found the same in Auckland and came away untouched. This is such a contrast with the countryside, where we've been in awe most of the time. As I've said before, the countryside has so much more to offer than the urban life here.

For me, the word Christchurch has always had a special resonance. One of the first TV sports I remember watching was the Commonwealth Games, held in CHch (as the locals call it) in 1974 when I was 7. Later, in 1985, I applied to Oxford University to study Chinese at Christchurch college which, according to my Classics teacher Mr Watson-Wemyss, is the most distinguished. (I was accepted and yet turned down the much-sought after place, firmly believing that my success or otherwise should rely on my character rather than the University I went to...). Somehow I had hoped to have a memorable experience in CHch itself, but after cup of coffee, a wander round the shops and a few hours in the Internet cafe, Nicki and I looked at each other and said "let's hit the road".

Driving back up for the ferry to the North Island, we stayed at Kaikoura where we took a bed and breakfast room overlooking a beautiful bay and got frightened by a huge dog staying in the room opposite us. We also saw an angel on a spoon in the clouds (look carefully at the picture... we weren't on drugs, really...)

Then onto Picton the following morning, and on the ferry we met Peter again, the Belgian guy we had made friends with on the Milford Sound Ferry. He was suffering because he needed to find a place to stay in Wellington and everything was booked - due to an AC/DC concert that night! Every single place was booked and people were renting out their spare rooms to accommodate the 35,000 people coming (the ferry was full of Rock T-Shirts and leather). Once through to the other side, we drove Peter to a tiny village 40 km outside of the capital where he found a B&B in a back street.

The next destination has been Napier and Gisborne, where we have faced the first bad weather for weeks. We're conscious that the winter has been bitter back at home so no complaints to have an almost totally rained-out day today, the first we've had since Boston back in late October.

So the washing is being done, blogs are getting written, books being read and plans for the future being made. We've found some great ideas for future businesses and directions after we get back and realise it will be "back to the real world" before we know it, so we savour the time and the joy of the ride every day.

Two Footnotes.

Here is a New Zealand Wood Pidgeon, as captured by Nicki - beautiful, isn't it?

And we just read that the air-lift out of Macchu Picchu has been completed, after terrible floods have resulted in serious problems. Tourists were stranded at the nearest town, Aguas Calientes, and the the main site will be closed for weeks, while the trainline from Ag Cal to Cusco needs months of repairs. This is a disaster for the local people who rely massively on tourism for their income and livelihood (don't forget that the majority of the country live on less than $2 per day). To my shock, the BBC have posted a news clip in the main story on their website showing how excited a couple of tourists were to have a helicopter flight (1300 people have been airlifted out at huge cost to the Peruvian tourist board). The real story is the hardship those local people will face and how long it will take to bring a beautiful wonder of the world back to full accessibility - not the "excitement" of the disaster. We were so lucky to be able to see it in November.

The Waitaki Valley and Akaroa

After leaving Milford Sound, we headed through the countryside towards the East of the island, in the direction of Christchurch. The landscape continued to be beautiful, with clouds hugging the edges of the mountains, and at one stage the mountain peak shining in blue sky, with the rest veiled in mist.

Suddenly the scenery transformed into the huge and almost moon/desert looking Waitaki valley. Nicki took a couple of stunning pictures of the more barren hills and rougher fields, as we realised we have seen more variation of countryside in New Zealand than anywhere in the world. You drive through endless greenery and without concentrating you find yourself in what feels like a different country. It's an amazing experience.

That evening we stayed at a holiday park in a pretty little painted shed - big enough for a double bed and a little desk, communal showers and toilets nearby, 45 NZ Dollars (22GBP/24Euros). We don't know anywhere at home to stay for that price.

We wonder if we are ever going to meet a miserable and unfriendly person here. We just haven't found any - people have been happy, always saying hello, always asking about your travels, where you've come from, how you've enjoyed your time in New Zealand and giving recommendations for places to go. Bus drivers, petrol pump attendants and hotel owners have stunned us with their positive attitude.

The following day we headed on to Akaroa on the Banks peninsula. We stopped a few km away at a place called Duvauchelle, and we had noticed a number of French-sounding hotels and villages along the way. It turns out that the town was settled in the mid 1800's by a Frenchman who advertised free passage back in France to people who would come and take land to develop it. All through the beautiful little place by the water, you see places like "La Rochelle" motel and the "Bon-e-mail" Internet cafe. Strange to see this so far away from France!

On Monday we took the Skyline Walk, described in the leaflet as a trek requiring "moderate fitness". We've been caught out like this before - a New Zealand "moderate" is our idea of "high level of". The walk was quite uphill for a while, then really uphill, then bushy with grass at head-height uphill. Listening to Nicki's curses and noises, plus her moment of telling herself "just get through the bloody thing!" helped me get through too... She is always the pathfinder and never more so than now - it was hard! But after a few sweary moments when attacked by cacti near the summit, we were rewarded by stunning views of the bay when we reached the top, after 2 hours of solid slog. The rest of the journey was along and back down to the town along "The Stony Bay Road", a road with a lot of stones, and, well, a view of the bay...

There's a few days to go in New Zealand and we are now in Christchurch for a small fix of "busy"- the first time we've been to a city since Auckland - before we head back to the North Island for the last part of this leg of the trip.

An Overnight Cruise on Milford Sound

We ran 3 times, made two big walks and a long bikeride by the time we left Wanaka, the countryside was so beautiful and everything in New Zealand is focused on making it easy for people to enjoy it.

Simple things like toilets (with paper and sinks, such small mercies...) in any time and along walkways, plus free parking and clearly marked tracks to follow for walking and biking have made it a joy to be outside. Even the bike-seats were gentle on our rear ends.

We left Wanaka and spent a night in Queenstown, a busy backpacker town by a lake with mountains in the background. It seems to be the centre of adrenalin sports (bungy jumping, sky diving etc) and we've come to a theory about why these are so popular in New Zealand. Life is just calm and easy, with few bumps along the way. Nature is so incredible and great places to visit abound, so at a certain moment there is a need for more. That's when the adrenalin stuff comes up and people feel the urge to jump hundreds of metres out of a plain or attached to a long rubbery rope. It's not a 'normal' thing to do!

I have to say that places like Queenstown leave me a bit cold. They are created on the back of the backpacker tourism and as such are busy in the evenings. The surrounding area is generally absolutely beautiful, but the towns themselves are very new with little character. In this country, the interest in and value of Nature and the great outdoors far outweighs that of the cities and towns.

We drove the 4 hour stunning journey to take the Milford Sound ferry, a world-renowned tour. We had chosen the overnight cruise thanks to advice from friends who had said that the place is teeming with boats during the day. Milford Sound itself is actually a fjord, a huge inlet carved by a glacier leading out to the sea. It has very high mountains surrounding it, including a waterfall that is higher than Niagara Falls in Canada (we were surprised by this because it didn't look that big, but we were assured this was an optical illusion caused by the great height of the mountains surrounding it.)

We were extremely lucky - it was cloudy for the whole of the drive there, and then at the last minutes before boarding the sun came out. This gave the water an unbelievable blue and a great contrast with the mountains.

One nice story - apparently there is one point on the mountains which is 700 metres high and a woman daredevil jumped from the top with a parachute. TV stations were alerted and interest was high as it was the first time this had been attempted. She jumped it, the 'chute came out just in time and she survived - unfortunately the camera crew had hit a technical hitch at the wrong moment and didn't get the shot. They asked her to do it again (some nerve!) but she calmly suggested they get stuffed, and the jump has never been done before or since.

The evening on the boat was made perfect by spending time with Peter, Dirck and Marijn from Belgium. We swapped travelling stories and drank bottle after bottle of red wine until well after the stars came out. They knew a lot about the stars and explained that most of what we could see now was impossible normally - mainly because we are looking at a different part of the universe, as well as the fact that the lack of artificial light made many stars more clear. It was a perfect, clear night and we loved it all.

The morning was windy and crisp as we finished off the cruise and nursed our hangovers on the way over towards Akaroa.

Insight into "the most beautiful place in the world"

When I was at school, Geography was by far my worst subject. A combination of a slightly mad teacher, my basic lack of interest in incise meanders and the Aswan Dam, and a final-nail-in-the-coffin class on Sheep Farming in Holland ("when will I EVER need this in my future life?!?" I shouted to myself, angrily...) ensured that I was heading for failure at my O Level in the subject at 16 years old. The last report card before the exam bore the damning comment "until recently, he has been quite idle, but he has started doing some work."

My brother mentioned at Easter before the test "getting a lot of A grades doesn't count if you fail one". This spurred me to cram and revise more for Geography than any other subject, mostly out of stubbornness and a desire not to be defeated, and somehow I scraped a C grade to pass. However, I don't remember studying anything about New Zealand. Over the years I never really needed to know anything about the country and if I am honest, I didn't even know there were two islands here before this trip... But now that I am here and loving every minute of our trip, I felt it was time to get a bit of background about it. These few bits are picked up from Wikipedia.

New Zealand was first discovered by a Dutch explorer called Abel Tasman (one of the National Parks is named after him) in 1642, and despite leaving very quickly after some of his crew were killed by natives, he nevertheless gave the country its name - Zeeland is a province in Holland, so New Zealand means New Zeeland. He was the last European to get to the remote location for over 120 years, until Captain James Cook came in 1769.

At at time when French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese were all colonising like hell, the Brits signed a treaty with the indigenous Maori in 1840, giving them some kind of claim to ownership of land. The capital was originally in Auckland, based in the centre of the North Island, but moved to Wellington in 1863. The city is almost in the centre of the two islands, and at the time there was a fear that the South Island would break away as an independent state.

New Zealand was the first nation in the world to grant women the right to vote, a sign of social advances to come. Although a part of the long-past British Empire in 1947, the country became politically independent from England long before. Amazingly, a large part of its economy from the 1890's was based on export of Dairy and meat products to Britain, so far away, thanks to the development of refrigerated shipping. (Nicki and I agreed that our first recollection of the name of this country came from advertising on TV for New Zealand Lamb).

One basic issue is the balance between the Maori rights and the incoming settlers. It was in 1859 that the number of Pakeha (non-Maori) settlers reached the same number as Maori - 60,000 each (there are 4 million people here now). Various treaties and agreements led to battles and wars over land. No need to go into the details - eventually the Maori were outnumbered, and the movement to respect historical land rights in the last 35 years has only marginally redressed the balance of injustice which dates back to that 1840 treaty.

In the two World Wars, New Zealand had huge numbers (in relation to population) involved and America had 400,000 troops based on the islands to prepare for attacks into Japan. The alliance with USA grew after WWII as the UK focused on Europe and joined the EEC in 1973, and the ANZUS alliance (between NZ, Australia and USA) went so far as to have NZ troops fighting in the Korean and Vietnam wars. But this treaty was brought to an end when the government refused to allow Nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed warships onto its territories, a major stand against America.

Indeed, New Zealand declared itself a Nuclear-Free Zone in 1987, and this is a symbol of its focus on the environment. Unlike Australia, nature here is incredibly benevolent, with very few predators (eg no snakes) and a huge number of birds that are found only on the two islands. We have been amazed at how clean everything is, how little litter there is and the high level of re-cycling and environmental messaging around. Tourism contributes around 9% of Gross Domestic Product, and yet all tourists seem to catch the "awareness of environment" bug. The beauty of the place forces you to think about how to preserve it.

The country's economy was severely hit in the 70's. Seeing the prosperity and orderliness here on our visit makes me really surprised to read that in 1982 it had the lowest per capita income of all the world's developed nations. Dramatic shifts and a daring approach to a free economy by successive governments since have helped create a much healthier basis - an example is that New Zealand was the first developed country to sign a free-trade agreement with China in 2008.

Today, New Zealand ranks highly in comparison charts with other countries on "human development, quality of life, life expectancy, literacy, public education, peace, prosperity, economic freedom, ease of doing business, lack of corruption, press freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights. Its cities also consistently rank among the world's most liveable." (Wikipedia).

Add to all of this the incredible scenery and the relaxed friendliness of the people and you have what Nicki and I feel is the most beautiful place in the world.

Stunning scenery on the way to Wanaka

Our travels through New Zealand continued on to Fox Glacier. This was much larger than Franz Josef and the huge valley was awash with tiny flecks of gold, a link to the goldrush days which also touched this country.

We started the day at Lake Matheson and for the first time since we arrived, there was almost a busy air about this gorgeous spot. As I've mentioned, the tourist places seem so uncrowded and here the car park was almost full for the first time. If this beautiful lake - surrounded by trees with the only sounds being birds and trickling water and the view of the mountains in the distance - was anywhere in Europe, it would be overflowing with visitors.

Our next destination was Wanaka, and we drove the 260km through mountains, past streams and through valleys in awe of what we were seeing. As we neared the town itself we drove for miles along Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea, mouth open at jaw-droppingly stunning landscape.

Wanaka itself is a calm little town of 10,000 people settled at the edge of the lake, surrounded by hills and dramatic scenery. It's simply the most beautiful place I have ever been. The view from the little cabin we are staying in says it all.

As we arrived, we found part of the town blocked off for the Challenge Wanaka event - a triathlon where crazy, fit people swim 3.8km, cycle 180km and run a full 42km marathon. The winner did this in just under 9 hours! It seems this event is world renowned and we were so lucky to be there as the athletes finished the last leg, the running. One guy of 80 years old came in - he and two other guys had done a leg each and the others in his team were youngsters - just 72 and 72 years old... The whole thing was very inspiring.

Yesterday, we set off for the Roy's Peak walk, not fully understanding that it was a track that went directly upwards from the beginning. We walked uphill solidly for 75 minutes, wondering how hard it would be to get to the peak, when we met a couple coming down. "How far from the top are we?" I asked. "About half way" they answered. At that moment it started raining. Cue quick descent back down...

But the views on the way were worth every hard step.

Today is 19th January and we've been away now for nearly three months, with exactly two months left. For the first time, we've started to trun our minds seriously towards the future when we get back. But we try to focus on being here, now, and on all there will be to see on our way through Australia and back home via Hong Kong and Thailand, in this unique and lucky time of our lives.

A Fast Moving Glacier

After leaving Nelson, we drove on to Lake Rotoiti, perhaps the most beautiful and peaceful place we have been so far.

It amazes me how such a lovely location – a huge blue lake, surrounded by mountains and greenery – can be so quiet. There were a dozen cars there, a few people swimming, a couple of boats skimming across the water and a few ducks terrorising the visitors for food. The atmosphere and air was so fresh and clear.

That evening we drove through – again – endlessly gorgeous views. Our car is of course not the quickest, added to which we wanted to take in the views. But we knew we were driving slowly when a huge logger truck overtook us.

Strangely, the town where a long river meets the sea was really ugly. Greymouth lives up to its name, one of the least inspiring river towns I can remember. It was, well... grey. The hostel was a funny place too – 60 NZ dollars (28 GBP/30 Euros) bought us what looked like a converted horsebox sitting outside, with a bed and a fridge and nothing more. As the wind came up unexpectedly, the whole thing shook and we wondered if we would still be in the same location the following morning.

Yesterday we drove onto Franz Josef, a town at the base of a glacier which was named after the Austrian Emperor after some Austrian dignitaries had visited it in the late 19th century. In case you don't know... a glacier is old, unmelted snow which gets bigger and bigger each time snow falls again. The pressure of each fall compacts it down and, like water, this pressure causes it to move. But it travels 100,000 times slower than a river.

Franz Josef glacier's edge has moved an incredible amount over the years and still can advance or retreat by around 5 metres per day. We stood at Peter's Pond and took some pictures of it in the distance, knowing that 10 years before that spot was covered in ice. Although it has advanced over the last few years too, seeing the massive reduction of ice in the valley gives a very real of the effect of global warming.

The walk up to the Glacier was very hard – rocky, steep and lots of loose rocks. We'd been told “don't worry about the sign telling you to go to stop unless you're experienced” but after an hour we saw two people coming the opposite direction. “Was it worth it?” Nicki asked. They looked at each other, shrugged and said things like “wasn't as good as we expected... very slippery... still a long way to go...”. That was enough for us – we turned around and sped back to the lookout spot for long-distance pics.

On the way to FJ, we picked up a hitch-hiking Canadian girl called Jamie. She had a huge amount of stuff but she said this had been no problem as she had never had to wait more than a few minutes for rides, mostly with locals. We found it amazing that this young girl was so comfortable to hitch-hike, something we would both hesitate to do back at home., But it seems in tune with this country – the atmosphere is of sharing, taking care of the environment and it's difficult to imagine that any harm would come to her here.

That evening, the sky turned into an amazing sunset and Nicki caught the beauty of it on her new camera.

Half Marathon walking in Abel Tasman

The ferry to the South Island is around 3 hours and it's clear on arrival that the climate and scenery are very different to the North. Apparenty it's been raining all “summer” (the Kiwi summer is the opposite to a European, straddling Christmas) and the clouds are heavy when we get there. We drove 2 hours through endless lush greenery in landscape now made familiar by the Lord of the Rings films, made in this area.

We walked through vineyards around Nelson (meeting Kenny the huge black pig on the way), which apparently is one of the main wine regions in the country. We were susprised to hear that most of the vineyards have been going only since the early 90's, and although the climate is warm enough to produce great wines, it was not a focus of attention at all in the past.

Yesterday we did a marathon walk at the Abel Tasman National Park. It runs along the coast so the standard thing is to take a boat as far North as you like, walk back to another point and take a boat back. Unfortunately we got our timings and location wrong, bought a ticket for a boat in 45 minutes which we had to catch 20 mins drive away and 3 km walk away. After parking the car, we ran the 3 km up and down the tracks in the forest to Coquille bay, in boots and carrying daypacks,hoping to catch the boat. Somehow we managed to get there in time, but we knew we then had a 20km walk ahead of us.

The boat took us past beautiful bays of golden sand and, as always, few people. In England, this whole area would have been swamped! The combination of sea, sand, greenery and mountainous countryside is unique, I don't remember seeing it anywhere else.

As we stepped off the boat at Bark Bay, we knew it was going to be a hard “tramp” (the Kiwis call trekking Tramping) and headed off at a fast pace. The pathways in the park followed the coastline and the tropical greenery was constantly enveloping. It made me remeber the walks we did when I was growing up and my grandparents were living in Devon, as strangely much of the countryside has seemed similar to that area of England. It is more tropical here, but as we have traveled around, it has made me try to remember to appreciate the English countryside more when I get back to Europe.

We met a young guy from England, Mike, who had just graduated a few months ago. “The recession has killed most graduate jobs” he told us, “so I thought I'd do a bit of travelling and work out what I want to do with my life”. The temptation to give him all sorts of advice from being 20 years further down the line was huge. But when I was his age, I didn't listen to much advice from people like me no, so I kept quiet and we wished him luck. We've met a few travellers with his approach – you ask them “how long are you away?” and their answer is often “until the money runs out”.

The walk was amazingly beautiful. How do you describe continuously lovely greenery and coastline? And we marvelled at the pathways that are carefully maintained by the National Park.

After around 20 km, our feet started to hurt, but we pressed on and enjoyed the whole walk. That morning we had read about a journalist who is walking across the Canterbury Plains for 360km, and after the first day of 30km, his feet were shredded with blisters. Our boots have held up much better than that as Nicki hasn't had a single blister for the whole trip and mine have been few. Nevertheless, after covering 24km in total, we were glad to air our feet (luckily for Nicki, my boots came off outside – they smelled bad...)

Parasailing at Lake Taupo

Taupo is an adrenalin junkie's dream, with all kinds of activities. We decided to skip all the Bungy Jumping and Sky Diving for now and make a gentle start with Para-sailing.

We were taken out by two very cool guys operating the boat, blaring The White Stripes and Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix from the boat speakers. We went along with a New Zealander mother and daughter, and two sisters from Oxford whose family had moved here two years ago. It was interesting to hear from them about their experiences here.

The New Zealand mother said that certainly there was an element of taking the beauty of their home-country for granted. However, she and her husband had decided “right, let's hire a camper and get away for two weeks” and headed out into the countryside. It seemed typical of the Kiwi attitude, they seem very go-ahead people and if there is an opportunity to get to the water, up in the air or falling down from it, they take it.

“Friendliness and time for you, nothing is too much bother” was the main thing the Oxford girls said about the New Zealand people. They had been here two years and got a shock on a recent visit home – “people were so rude!” they said. They loved the countryside and the locals, but the biggest things they missed from home were “shops and friends – I miss my friends so much!”.

We've talked about the utopia of living here, because it really is a paradise. But the girls' experience highlights the paradox. One reason this is a fantastic place to live is the remoteness and the small number of people here. But that remoteness makes it impossible to keep contact with your established life back home. Unless there was ever a strong reason to start again and leave everything behind (which neither of us have now), we can't imagine living here, largely because of the disconnection with family and friends. Nicki can visualise coming back here at a later stage of life to travel for 6 months because she's absolutely captivated by the scenery, the people and the relaxed atmosphere. For me, I find the same – but there is a lack of “edge” to give it contrast and put things into different lights. I think I would get complacent living here and miss the darker side of life.

The para-sailing itself was just great. They attach us side-by-side in harnesses to the parachute at the back of the boat, speed up and gradually feed a line out as you lift into the air. Rising up, suddenly everything is calm and quieter, as the sound of the boat and the waves drifts off below you. The view across the lake was fantastic and we got a great view of the coast where we'd both been running the day before (and seen around 20 black swans.) It was a lovely thing to do together.

After coming down, we drove south through the countryside and passed by the Ruapehu mountain, which we'd seen so clearly from a distance while up in the sky at Taupo. Looking at the snow-capped mountain close up was beautiful.

The evening finished with a hostel stay just north of Wellington in a lovely little place that reminded us both of our grandmother's homes. The coastline looked just like Devon and Cornwall in the South West of England - weird to feel so familiar, so far away from home.

Dolphins and Lakes in NZ

Before we came to New Zealand, anybody who ever went there gave absolutely rave comments on the country, and we can easily see why. It is the the place we love most so far on this trip.

It baffles us how the country has managed to create such a comfortable and high quality life and not be overwhelmed with people. Paihia in the Bay of Islands is a tourist centre, yet the front and beach are beautiful. There are no skyscrapers, just nicely designed and built motels. It seems New Zealanders are very self-sufficient when it comes to eating on holiday and there are lots of self-contained unit-type accommodation, including kitchenettes with all materials for cooking. As a result, restaurants are quite limited and don't dominate the bay area at all. Simple things like free parking are a surprise for us both.

What really surprises us is that it is peak holiday season here. New Zealand children are on holiday so we expected it to be busy. I think the concept of “busy” is just different here – we've felt completely relaxed, never hurried and not at all crowded.

The beauty of the scenery was extended into the island area when we went on a dolphin-viewing trip. The water is a lovely blue, and we quickly came upon a small family of dolphins (they had promised free return tickets if we didn't spy any at all.) The guide explained that over 50% of these clever mammals who are taken into captivity die within 4-6 weeks. The reason, apparently, is that swimming in a limited area gives no stimulation for their sizeable brains and results in them losing the will to live – heartbreaking.

Afterwards, we headed around various islands. We realised the special thing about the coastline and the islands is the combination of green grass and trees and absolutely blue water. We expect that kind of water colour in the Mediterranean, together with a more rough and arid coastline. To see lush greenery in direct contrast with such a water colour is a real treat.

Onward to “The Hole In The Rock”. We had picked up a New Zealand book in Auckland and after opening it on a random page. Nicki had pointed to a gorgeous place and said “I want to go there”. This was indeed the eroded space through a rock-island which we were now heading through.

The people we have met from New Zealand all seem incredibly nice. We are sure this is not the case for all 4 million people, but it is incredible that people smile, they will happily talk to you as soon as you start a random conversation, and in general people seem very content. I was running along a footpath yesterday and a guy happily said “g'd morning – bit too bloody fit for me, mate!” (if only he knew the real truth...)

We drove to Taupo on Friday, a 500km drive through the North Island, giving us views of endless beautiful countryside. Our car is funny. We hired for the cheapest price possible and we have nicknamed it Dumpy, as it struggles up hills but gets us there finally. We are in the hands of our navigation system which we nicknamed Libby (short for “Liberty” - because we felt she gives us freedom to enjoy the ride.) Every now and again she gets it wrong, but generally it works well and we can always shut her off if she gets too directive...

Lake Taupo is 600km square and the crater of a huge, extinct volcano – apparently there is documentary evidence that one of the eruptions in the 181AD was seen worldwide, as it was double the size of the eruption of Vesuvius. The town itself was remote until the early 20th century and now is a backpacker town with so much going on. You can walk, para-sail, bungy jump, skydive, and even Zorb – a great big inflatable ball which you strap yourself inside and get rolled down a hill while you try to hold your lunch down.

Our hostel is excellent and has all facilities (which now for us means good shower and bathroom, comfortable bed, laundry facilities and a kitchen.) However, it was hilarious as the bar across the road had an open air stage and the band started just as we settled down for bed, around 10pm. It went on til 3am – it was incredibly LOUD! We could almost not hear each other talk in our own room. Nicki resorted to ear-plugs at around 1:30am, which miraculously worked. The worst part was that the band was really good, playing great song after great song, but we were just too tired to go and join the party. We brace ourselves for tonight's onslaught. My age is getting to me...

The walk we did today was just fantastic. We saw another stunning river with the cleanest water, plus countryside all the way that mixes familiar trees with the palm-type trees that remind of the tropical nature of the climate. We also saw a lot of locals swimming in the Thermal streams that ran into the river – we felt the water and it was really hot, even hotter than I would ever run a bath! All the people we saw were cycling, swimming, bungy jumping – it's becoming so clear that the standard life here in New Zealand is outside and active.

At the end of it, an amazing rush of water burst through a narrow area in the rock, the Huka Falls. All along, new met friendly people and saw gorgeous countryside, which it seems is going to be how it is for the rest of our time in New Zealand.