Rotorua

Auckland, Rotorua, Queenstown, Wanaka, Bay of Islands, North Island, South Island, snowboarding, mountain biking, swimming, walking, talking, rain, sun, wind, snow, parties, barbeques, beer, wine, cars, planes and a bit of everything else. Well it’s been a while, what’s the excuse? Well you know how it is - we’re still in Auckland working, living and generally enjoying New Zealand. The months just seem to be flying past. We’ve been away 10 months now.

Rarotongo is our next destination, only for a week but it will still be good. Flying to the Cook Islands on the 4th of November for Abby’s birthday. We fly across the dateline on the way, so we leave Auckland at 11 o’clock on the Thursday night and fly for 3 hours and arrive at 4am of the same day, 23 hours before we left. Freaky, no?

Our last trip away was to Rotorua, or Roto Vegas, as it’s known. It seems to be built on what could only be described as a very active thermal area. You walk down the street and there’s boiling water bubbling through the cracks in the ground, and the horizon is covered with clouds of steam, lurching upwards. George Bernard Shaw visited Hell’s gate Rotorua in 1934 and said of it, ‘I wish I had never seen the place, it reminds me too vividly of the fate theologians have promised me’. We managed to pick the windiest weekend to test out our campervan. (We bought a van and had a boat fitter kit it out for us, very cool. Think A-team van meets the mystery machine). Was fine through the night, but on the drive back there were trees blown over, and branches on the roads. Think we slept through it all.