Beni, Jeni and Pee-sac in Welly

Beni, Jeni and Pee-sac at the Wellington Cable Car

(They were surprised to find one to their scale......)

From Napier to the "Big Welly"

Wellington city and harbour....view from Botanic Gardens

Old St Pauls Cathedral in Wellington

Side street in Napier

National Tobacco Company in Napier

After the excitement of Taupo, we headed east to Napier. It is a very nice town that is very much Art Deco, since the original town was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930's (hence the art deco theme) There are also a million vineyards around, but we did not go to see any of them. We are trying to watch our cash, which is disappearing very fast. We spent a few days there and on the beach there is a complex that you can swim and have a sauna, so we did that one day.

We are now in Wellington...we spent the whole of yesterday walking around looking for the "big welly" sculpture and could not find it.......it was in our book, so we knew it existed. The girls in the tourist info, said no and we said yes...anyway to cut a long story short, it does exist....only 90km away in a different part of NZ...fools...the weather was windy, wet and cold, so we had to take refuge in a nice wee pub.

Meeting up with friends that we originally met in Argentina and then again in La Paz, later today and are catching the ferry on Tuesday to the South Island. No plans as to what we are doing yet, other than meeting a girl from Glasgow, Karen, that IB knows on Tuesday for dinner...we will probably head down the west coast to Queenstown.

Sorry no pictures....there is not a lot to see when you are in the pub...going back into Welly tomorrow, so will try and get some then..

The Blue Devils..

IB and Kane

Debo and Glenn
(and Debo kept her eyes open the whole way down)

The other day, we were thinking....hmmm, what shall we do today ? I know let's throw ourselves out of a plane 12,000 feet up in the sky.....cool. That was that decided then.

Yep, we did a 12,000 foot tandem skydive over Lake Taupo. What can we say.....apart from we wish we had the cash to do another....and another....and another. It's amazing. Debo even reckons it may have cured her fear of heights!!!

It took about 20 minutes (in a wee plane crammed full of skydivers and their passengers) to climb up to 12,000 feet, where a the door was slid open. You then had to dangle your feet over the edge and just as your thinking "this is bloody high", you're thrown out ........aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh is all we could manage in the first few seconds, before we realised we weren't gonna die (well not yet anyway - we were still pretty high up). We both had about 47 seconds of freefall, before the parachutes were opened (which almost cuts you in half) and we started to gently drift downwards. You can then start to appreciate the view.

Amazing, brilliant, excellent, fantastic (in fact all of them)

Cheers to Kane and Glenn, our jumpmasters; Joel and Eric the cameramen (yes we have a DVD and loads of photos) and to everyone else at Taupo Tandem Skydiving.

We will definitely be doing this again at some point in our lives.

Pure Steamin'

Some steaming hot spring type landscape

Some more geysers and stuff

We are currently in Taupo, in the middle of North Island, and took a visit to a thermal park called the Hidden Valley at Orakei Korako (just north of Taupo). There we saw plenty of bubbling mud pools, geysers, steaming pools and a nice eggy sulphur smell. It was very weird to see the landscape bubbling away etc. Well worth the visit.

Rags the duck!!!

Who needs an alarm call....when this little devil is around?!?

This was one of the many ducks at the Wanganui camp site. He was always looking for food (and we always gave it too him) and wouldn't run away when you chased him, unlike the other ducks. We christened him Rags, cause the only way you could get rid of him was to chase him with the red rag (or cloth....but cloth is a silly name for a duck) from the campervan.

New Plymouth

Mt Taranaki

The wind wand in New Plymouth

After Waitomo, we decided to carry on down the west coast of North Island, to New Plymouth. New Plymouth is mainly known for it's gas production in New Zealand, but there are some pretty nice beaches and of course Mt Taranaki which can be seen for pretty much everywhere (we thought this was Mt. Doom, from Lord of the Rings, but it's not....just a "look alikey". This is a dormant volcano, which last erupted in 1755, and has a 2518m summit. We were going to do some walking, or possibly some hill climbing, but the day we were going to do it, it was chucking it down.

We also saw the Wind Wand, which is a bright red 45 metre carbon fibre tube, with a light globe at the top. This was designed by Len Lye (from New Plymouth) as a "kinetic sculpture" which moves as the wind blows. For more info click here. It's kind of cool and almost theraputic.

Another thing which happened in New Plymouth, was Debo cracked one of her fillings....eating a crisp, would you believe it. We won't tell you the price, to get it fixed, becasue you won't believe that either.....but the dentist did a great job, all at the last minute too!!

From 90 Mile Beach to Waitomo

Tana Mahuta

A river flowing through one of the many limestone caves.

A wee "cave pixie" at the end of a cave

First of all....sorry for the delay in the update. It appears to be really difficult to get a computer that will allow you to upload pictures to the Net (unlike South America, which was easy).

We left Northland, to go to Waitomo, which is a huge area of limestone caves. On the way there, we passed through one of the many Kauri forests. We stopped off to see Tana Mahuta, which is a 1200 year old "god of the forest". It is 6 metres wide and rises to almost 18 metres to the lowest branches....in other words...pretty damn big. Unfortunately, a week after we saw it, there was a great storm in Northland and all the top branches were blown off (luckily for us we were nowhere near though).

After we went to Waitomo and stayed a couple of days. We didn't go into any of the "illuminated caves" or the Glowworm caves....due to a combination of claustrophobia and cost, but we did do some of the walks around the area and got a feel of the area. I'm sure we will get a chance to see glowworms at a later date...cost and conditions permitting.

(We know, we know.....skinflints.....but we still have a bit of budget you know.)

Cape Reinga

Debo tests her Rally skills on some of the unsealed roads around Cape Reinga

Beni, Pee-sac and Jeni at Cape Reinga lighthouse

Cape Reinga is the most northerly accessible point on North Island and is believed, by Maori, to be the "place of leaping", where the spirits of the dead depart. The spirits reach Cape Reinga along 90 mile beach (actually 64 miles approx. long) a wide band of sand running straight along the west side of the peninsula, before departing.

Again, Cape Reinga has some stunning views and you can see where the waves of Tasman Sea meet the swirling currents of the Pacific Ocean in a "boiling cauldron of surf" (like a big swirl in the water).

The Karikari peninsula

The beach ... 2 minutes from our camper

....was covered in shells

From the Bay of Islands, we continued north (through some more rain), to the Karikari peninsula. This was another amazing beach which was littered with shells. The sun stayed out over the next couple of days and gave us a chance to recharge our batteries (not that they need much recharging with this new lifestyle!!)

Paihia and the bay of islands

Part of the Bay of Islands, viewed from Paihia

"whare runanga" Maori meeting house constructed between 1934 and 1940

We travelled north, from Auckland, to a place called Paihia, in the bay of islands. It was pretty wet the first 2 nights, but cleared up on the 3rd day. Our campsite was right on one of the many beaches and when the sun came out, it was white sand and turquoise water.

Beside Paihia is Waitangi, where the "treaty of Whaitangi" was signed, by the Maori chiefs in 1840, to give them "protection" by the British Government against the French. This effectively gave the British control in New Zealand (we'll let you decide, if this is true or not). Around the grounds, we visited the treaty house, the worlds largest Maori war canoe (reconstruction) and the Maori meeting house (above). The meeting house is amazing, since it is covered with loads of Maori carvings.