No natural hazards to avoid today, so we took a trip up the east coast. First stop Whakatane where the sun came out so we took a trip up to the viewpoint above the town and then a walk along the shore.

The statue represents the story of a Maori woman who had to rescue a canoe of supplies after it drifted out to sea. Women weren’t supposed to row apparently but the men were busy exploring new lands (or something like that!).

We then moved on down the coast to Mount Maunganui where we watched some people surfing. Tom would like you to believe that this is him, but unfortunately it’s not true.

Final stop of the day was MacLaren Falls before we headed for the motel. We  worked out that by the time we’ve dropped the car off back in Auckland we’ll have done about 1,000 miles in NZ. Better add that to the offsetting account!

[Tom: - No photos with this post yet, because the wifi in this coffee shop is painfully slow. I'll add them to flickr when I get a better connection: http://flickr.com/photos/tdroza]

We flicked on the TV whilst having breakfast this morning to see news of a tsunami heading towards NZ following the earthquake off Samoa. They were predicting that it would hit Napier later in the morning with waves of up to 1 metre. This is quite scary news when you’re from the UK and not used to such things (noone else seemed particuarly worried!) and as we were staying on Marine Drive and could see the sea from the window, we decided to pack up and head inland instead of driving along the coast to Gisborne as planned. As it turned out, the wave when it hit was a bit of a non-event and we could probably have carried on as planned, but better safe than sorry.

So we headed back down the road to Taupo, just to check that it really does rain all the time there (we can confirm that it does). We stopped at this viewpoint and almost missed the waterfall by not getting out of the car in the rain. We couldn’t see it from the car, but could hear as soon as we got out.

In Taupo we stopped for coffee and to pick up some lunch from this bakery (well we had to really). I tried out Brumby’s date cake which is similar to, but not as nice as, Mrs Brumby’s date and walnut cake.

We then headed on to Opotiki where we had planned to spend the evening. Not much here, but we did find a man selling rather nice pizza from a van, oh and Tom managed to get his feet wet by standing on the beach taking pictures with his back to the sea – made me chuckle.

Tomorrow we head back up the coast towards Auckland.

Opotiki map

The weather forecast wasn’t good for today but it turned out great. This morning we went for a walk around Napier and followed an art-deco tour route.

After coffee in Esquires (fast becoming our favourite NZ coffee shop chain)…

…this afternoon we went on a vineyard tour. We were picked up by our guide Vince and then picked up four other girls from their hotels on the way to the first of five vineyards. At the first place we tried about half a dozen different bottles and learned a bit about each wine from one of the owners before moving on. When you taste different wines one immediately after another it’s interesting to be able to compare the flavours and comment on the differences, but after the third or fourth vineyard they all pretty much blend into one!

At the third vineyard in Ngatarawa we were all amused by their slogan (below) where the last word is supposed to say “wine” but we all thought it looked like something else (maybe it was the wine though?!).

We had a great afternoon though and were very lucky to be with a group of people very similar to us in age and interests (from Leeds, Dublin and Perth) and we all got on really well and had a good laugh. So much so that the 6 of us all went out for dinner afterwards at a local Turkish restaurant in Napier.

Tomorrow we have the longest driving day of our trip as we travel to Opotiki via Gisbourne (we hope to be able to do the journey in about 5 hours). If we have time we’d like to take a detour to the Vineyard at Tolaga Bay but I suspect that as I’m doing all the driving in NZ (because we have quite a big car) that I won’t want to drive for an extra hour off our main route (sorry Sarah!).

Today has been mostly about avoiding the rain. We were planning to spend the day on and around Lake Taupo but at times the rain was so heavy that we could barely see the lake so we changed our plans. First we went to Huka Falls which is a section of rapids on the Waikoto  River that feeds a dam used for generating electricity. The rain wasn’t too bad here so we went for a walk alongside the river but it turned torrential as we were ready to leave.

After lunch (eaten in the car to avoid the rain) we went for a coffee to find some shelter and update the blog and then took a drive around Lake Taupo in our unnecessarily large hire car.

We then abandoned Taupo and drove to Napier which is where we’re spending the next 2 nights and is the southernmost point of our trip. It rained pretty much all the way but the highlight was seeing Melvyn and his Stump Branch Crew clearing a section of forrest alongside the road.

We’re now checked in to our motel and have been for a walk around Napier to check out where we might want to go for dinner. After we’ve dried off we’re going to head back out.

First off today, a trip round Lake Rotorua with a picture stop:

Then a stop at the Skyride gondola and luge for a cable car trip up the hill and a go on the luge (like a soapbox car down a winding route back down the mountain) with a chairlift back to the top.

Next stop was Wai-O-Tapu thermal wonderland where they have bubbling sulphur pools (smelly) with lots of strange colours from the minerals that are brought up from the rocks underground

Then we continued on to Taupo and our motel for the night. We had a proper little kitchen area so cooked dinner rather than eat out again.

Oh, and Tom thinks this is the best McDonalds ever (but we didn’t go in)

Yesterday we drove to Waitomo (about 3hrs South of Auckland). Along the way we drove through some pretty heavy rain but by the time we arrived late morning it was bright and warm again.

There are 3 main caves at Waitomo and we went in Ruakuri and the Glow Worm cave. The caves are formed by water in the ground eroding the limestone rock. Ruakuri is about 65 metres below ground and is a really impressive sight. There are some huge caverns with stalacmites and stalactites as well as some really low and dark pathways. We were underground for about an hour and the route is about 1.5 kilometres. Unfortunately, because it’s so dark and you’re constantly moving to keep up with the group (there were about 10 of us) it was really difficult to get decent photos. I took loads but only a handful were any good. This cave reminded my of the Blue John caves in Castleton in Derbyshire – except they don’t have glow worms!

The Glow Worm cave was next. This is a much smaller tour but includes a short boat ride into a large cavern with thousands of glow worms on the ceiling. Looking up is like looking into the sky with thousands of bright stars shining down on you. Normally the boat would have taken us back out to the open air but the water was too high because of the rain in the last few days so we had to turn back the way we had come. The glow worms are tiny creatures a bit like caterpillars but they grow a bright green colour as they burn off their waste. Cameras weren’t allowed in this cave so we couldn’t get any pictures.

Waitomo caves

We then drove West about 2hrs to Rotorua where we were staying for the night. This was the longest driving day until we start heading back North in a few days time but has been the best day so far.