the experience begins...

Having a great time so far in New Zealand ('the land of the big white cloud' as its known by the Maori's). We spent out 1st few days north of Auckland in a place called Paihai in the bay of islands. There, we went on a trip where we had chance to do some kayaking (we kayaked 40mins to a little island, it was a right mission!) We also saw the landmark known as the 'hole in the rock', which is exactly as the name suggests, that was pretty fun. Back in Auckland we had chance to snoop around the shops and the harbour and to catch up with the weekends shocking FA cup results! The Man U v Pompey game was on at 2.45am so we went out that night then stayed up and watched that till the early hours.

We have started our Kiwi experience now whcih is the company we're travelling with. They're really good and it's full of backpackers. Its very efficient with them, the drivers are always filling you in on fact ans stuff as you drive and you book all your activities through them - you just put your name down for anything you want to do that day and they book it for you, same with accommodation, so its nice having all that easilly sorted out for us.

We moved down from Auckland through Mercury Bay (there wasn't a great deal there) and then onto Rotarura, the 3rd most geo-thermally active place in the world. It smelt like rotten eggs from all the sulphor pools. There we're literally steaming holes and mud pool in the ground were the gas from the earth's core was escaping. It was there we went Zorbing!! that's where you get inside a massive inflatable ball and get thrown down a hill! We did a joint one, and they put water inside too so it was like a waterslide. We tried to stand up but, that wasn't happening and we hit the deck as soon as we started our decent.

We are now in Waitomo now (wai = water, tomo - cave) which is famous for its network of underground caves. On route we stopped of at a museum place where we had a look round and then taught the traditional dance the haka. We arrived this afternoon and as we've had no activities booked today, we spent the day catching up on sleep (you're up early most mornigs, and are doing stuff pretty much throughout the day so it tires you out) Tomorrow we're doing a caving trip where you abseil, raft and swim around all the caves in the dark, and then after that its the biggy, we're going to a place called Taupo to skydive! 15,000 ft, 60 seconds freefall...