I don't know why it is, that despite carefully planning everything down to the last second - my travels never go entirely smoothly. My...

My last job involved a fair amount of air travel - some of it long haul, and if the flight was longer than 4 hours, staff  were allowed...

Arrival Day When we first saw Bertha (our hire car) we were a little taken aback.  Given that she cost roughly half of what we were...

What on earth are Kumara Pies and Snapper Sliders? Day 4 - Saturday Waking up to Alpacas gazing at you, makes for an interesting start...

Day 5 - Sunday With our dolphin trip cancelled, we decided to have lazy morning then wander (and clamber) into town to have a look round...

Day 7 - Tuesday (cont..) Despite our sadness at not seeing Dolphins, we headed back to Bertha, changed out of our “swim with Dolphin”...

Day 9 - Thursday : Hot Water Beach and Whitianga You would have thought that by now, the chickens, ducks, cats and dogs would have...

For anyone who has never read The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings or sat through Peter Jackson's 6 films, this post may not mean much.  But ...

Day 10 - Friday From Hobbiton, we had a straight run down to Taupo for the biggest excitement of our trip so far. Lottie & Hellene, best...

Day 14 - Tuesday As Hellene had to work all day, Lottie and I had made plans to visit Te Pui in Rotorua.  Trying to get my tongue around...

Day 16 - Thursday Today was caving day. The Waitomo caves appear on most of the “must do in the North Island”, lists and are famous for...

Day 17 - Friday Leaving Taupo was hard - especially for the girls.  It takes over 24 hours to get to New Zealand from the UK (if you...

Day 18 - Saturday. Despite the harbour view element of our “special weekend break” not quite living up to expectations, we had high...

Day 18 - Sunday Arriving at the the Inter Island ferry port - felt a little surreal as it was almost identical to every other ferry port...

Day 19 Monday Waking up on Cape Foulwind, it was, surprise surprise, raining again. We had planned to go back to the seal colony on our...