We spent the rest of the day in Te Papa, which was interesting but got old after a while. There was an art section in it with some Colin McCahon paintings which I really liked; he does some great art work, often with interesting sentences or phrases. One of my favourites is in the Christchurch galley, and on the bottom it says ‘tomorrow will be the same, but not as this is’. I really like it. That night we were staying at a guys house that was on the IFSA-Butler program with Sharon, Danielle and Mark. Sadly it was their last day of exams, which meant people were getting very drunk, and none of us were in the mood for it. We went out for a few drinks, went to an Irish bar, and generally wandered around taking in the city.

The following sleep was one of the worst I have ever had. Sleeping on the floor, with different people coming in every hour and waking us up and being loud sucked. Some German girls who didn’t even live in the house took it upon themselves to wake us up several times, great stuff.

We left early the next morning to go into town and look around some more. Firstly we went back to the Irish pub and were told we couldn’t get breakfast there unless we had ID, and they didn’t take my driving licence, great stuff. I ended up getting a pancake from a very French man, as did Sharon, and it was damn good and sweet. The first thing we did that morning was head to the Houses of Parliament, and took a tour of them. They’re essentially based on the British ones with the red and green carpets in the House of Lords and commons. They, however, have abolished the house of lords as no-one there could be assed with it! They also didn’t have enough money to finish the building, so instead of the House of Lords being opposite the House of Commons as in England, they’re not. Tour over, we headed to the botanical gardens. A girl from home (Jenna Rogers) is in Wellington for the year, so we met up with her and took the gondola lift up to the gardens, which are on the top of one of the hills to the side of the city.

The gardens were kinda out of season, but still prettyful. Jenna told us how Wellington is normally ridiculously windy, and never that good for weather, but when we were there it was calm and warm. It was strange, the south island isn’t that far away at all, but I already felt as if it was warmer on the north island. It was great to meet someone from home, and all of the Americans were surprised they could understand her fine; for some reason they can never understand what I say, Brady described me as the most British sounding person ever!

Maggie, Josh, Lisa, Mel, Emily, Luke and Teddy were all in Wellington that day as well, so we all went to meet them for lunch. It was fantastic seeing them all again, but also a bit odd as I’d said my goodbyes in Christchurch and had gotten all emotional then, and seeing them all again was making me emotional again! We all ate at a Macs brewery restaurant, and after the meal Jenna excused herself as she had to work. We also had to head off and begin driving north; that night Brady, Sharon, Mark, Danielle and I were staying in Palmerston North with Lizze and Dan who were also from the IFSA program. Dan also went to school with Danielle, so they were pretty good friends and wanted to catch up.

The drive only took a couple of hours, so we got there and all went straight out to a food court to eat. Some Indian food later and we hit up Pak ‘n’ Save for some cider/wine/general alcohol before heading out. After some Ring of Fire we headed into town, to a place called ‘The Game’, a karaoke bar, which I was not overly thrilled to go to! A few drinks later and Dan and I sang Thunderstruck by ACDC very, very badly. Can’t say it was the highlight of my night…! Anyhoo, we left there thankfully and Dan and I went to a house club, leaving everyone else behind as they were taking forever leaving.

A few drinks later and the others arrived; all of us were a tad worse for wear at this point! A lot of dancing ensued, and we left sometime the next morning. In Palmerston North they have a late night pie shop, but with a twist. The dude behind the counter serves you in tiny, tiny shorts, and if you ask him to he whips it out apparently, tasty… Apparently he used to be a lecturer at the uni and had a stroke, which is why he does what he does, and if that is the case it sucks.

One taxi ride home and we were back for a short nights sleep before leaving the next morning. We said our goodbyes to Lizzie and Dan early the next morning (8ish), and got in the car without anyone saying much. Brady doesn’t drink, and being the only one not hungover/way over the legal limit, he drove that day.

We all slope a fair bit that drive, but we were all awake when we drove the desert road. This was spectacular, a desert 3520 feet above sea level. There are several volcanoes on one side, named Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. These names meant nothing to me, and seemed damn confusing, but if I said Mt. Doom I’m guessing you’ll know what I mean. Mt. Ngauruhoe is in fact Mt. Doom, and it was incredible. They were all snow capped, and surrounded by beautiful blue skies. I came back here later; see the third entry of my blog when it comes out in the near future!

A bit after midday we arrived in Matamata, which is where the set of Hobbiton is located (a very Lord of the Rings themed day). We got on a tour pretty soon, and got driven out to the set. To be honest, I wasn’t overly fussed on doing this, but the others were and I’m glad I did. It turns out only 19 (I think) of around 50 of the hobbit holes are still remaining, and it’s only by chance that they are. New Line Studios (who made LOTR) were in the process of taking them down, but it had to be postponed due to weather. People then asked to see the set, and the farm owners got in contact with New Line, who then let them keep the holes that were left, and agrees to maintain them. They’re all completely white, for a couple of reasons; a) to help preserve them, b) it makes them visible in bad weather, c) everything on the movie was a base construction with everything on top being made of incredibly well painted polystyrene. Literally, everything. The bridges, the buildings, everything was fronted by painted by polystyrene. As that’s pretty bad for the environment New Line took the polystyrene down as soon as filming had finished, took it to Wellington, and got rid of it. Another interesting thing at the set was the oak tree. The Tolkien’s said if the movie was made the oak tree which is described in massive detail in the book had to be in the film. As there wasn’t one on site, they had to buy one from nearby, cut it into small pieces and then reassemble it at the set. That’s a fair bit of effort for a 22 ton tree! Also, as it was then dead they had to put thousands of fake leaves on it, so it looked right for filming.

So the set was interesting and after we left we drove to Waitomo, home of very famous glow worm caves. In my guide book we found a very cheap sounding hostel ($12 a night I think), so we headed to that. It turned out to be a cavers hit, with no-one there at all, and a collection box in the main room. To sum it up in one word: amazing. We had a big living room type thing with wood fire, kitchen, a cat Mark named Belle and a bunk bed with a mattress that could hold at least 10 people. We stuck a space heater in that room, made some tea, and reclined in front of the fire. It was fantastic. Danielle and Mark knitted, Brady and I wrote journals and read, and Sharon sat there hating Belle as she’s allergic to cats.

We got a semi early night, and went to our by now roasting hot room and got into our bags. For some region we then began to debate war, which (to my surprise) Danielle and Brady were for, and Sharon and I were dead against. Not wanting to get involved, Mark said nothing… Not the lightest bedtime talking, and it got people a bit riled up! No matter, we all settled in for a good nights sleep with nothing to get up early for the next morning.

Then followed one of the best days I have ever had.

I arose after Sharon, who I found rekindling the fire and starting to make pancakes, awesome! We spent the morning sitting around the fire, eating pancakes and spent a very leisurely morning reading, knitting, talking about religion, and then talking about other stuffs. It was really peaceful, and I really liked it.

We’d come to Waitomo to go to the caves, and at around midday we set off to a caving centre to go on the tour we’d booked into. We’d decided to go ‘toobing’, which involved sitting in big rubber rings and gently floating along a slow river through the caves, instead of walking around them. We met our guide (Meg) and set off in her van. It was only the five of us plus Meg doing the tour that day, which was great; no annoying tourists there!

We all got into massive 5ml wetsuits, booties and wellies, and set off for the cave entrance. Meg showed us the distance we’d be going from above ground, it only looked a few hundred metres, but Meg assured us it would take at least a couple of hours to go that distance.

We climbed down a ladder in to the darkness, and one tight squeeze past some rocks later we were in the start of the cave. We had out headlamps on at this point and were all excited for what lay ahead. We began walking through the cave, looking at all of the stalagmites and stalactites all around us, until we reached our first stopping point, a very mini glow worm cave. We turned our lights off and looked around at the ceiling being lit by small worms, surreal! The light is emitted form the worms’ bums, and is from chemical matter breaking down inside them. They cannot excrete, so all waste is burnt off in the form of light.

Lights on, and we went to our first toobing port of call. We all got a tube and jumped off a ledge into the pool below. Linking ourselves in a chain, we slowly floated down a long tunnel with our lights now off. Glow worms littered the ceiling, and it felt like the Milky Way was just above us, but in glow form! It was incredibly serene, but it had to end. We got to the end of the tunnel, and turned our lights back on. Whilst Meg walked the tubes back to the top o the tunnel we were told to crawl through a very narrow tunnel with our lights off and to wait for her in the cave at the end. This freaked me out, but what felt like a long time later I arrived in a big cave with the others. A few minutes later and Meg walked round the corner, asking how we’d found it.

We carried on for a few minutes more and stopped for a hot drink and some chocolate (Meg carried them) to keep us warm. It was lovely, just sitting in a cave, having and eat and not being overly cold either! We pressed on through a section which we had to swim through, and came to our last toobing point. Here we lay on our fronts and casually drifted through a green glow towards the end of our toobing experience. Just before leaving we saw some wetas – massive ass bugs which are freaky. We exited the cave into the night, and instantly got pretty darn cold. On our walk back to the hut and warm showers we saw a possum in the trees, very NZ!

Some hot showers and a drive back into town later and we decided to drive to Rotorua, which is very famous for its hot springs. Emily, Teddy, Mel and Luke were also there that night, so we intended to meet up with them. Our friend Jon had told us about some hot pools which you could bathe in as well which were just under a bridge by a road, and they sounded awesome.

An hour and a bit later we rendezvoused with the others, and all decided to head to the springs. I jumped in the others car as I hadn’t seen them for a while, and wouldn’t be seeing them again after this point.

30km later, and we arrived a bridge enshrouded in stream. Already in swimming trucks, we jumped out of the car and made our way to the steaming river below. The water was deliciously warm, and we quickly sank into it. After a while we moved downstream, to find a massive pool with some others already in it, who were just leaving. This pool was fed by two rivers; one hot and one cold. It was amazing, you could adjust how warm you wanted the water by moving around in the giant pool, and it was great fun running form the hot side to the cold!

Something happened then that I did not expect. We were all sitting around in a large circle, when Brady went ‘guys, I’m not actually wearing my shorts anymore’, really not the person I was expecting to say that! Needless to say, Sharon, Emily and I joined him in it, but sadly the rest wouldn’t! We stayed there until around 11.30, when we dragged ourselves out of the pool and into our clothes. The other car headed back to their hostel, whilst we headed to a nearby campsite, which was deserted and had no running water, which sucked as we had hardly any. We set up camp and got to sleep. Thus ended one of the best days I’ve ever had.

The next morning we woke up rather parched, and hastily got the tent down. As we were in a thermal hotspot I really wanted to see some of the geysers, mud pools, etc. We set out to some nearby mud pools and watched them boil and goop away for about 10 minutes before heading back to the car and heading to a ‘thermal wonderland’. I’d also like to note everything here completely reeks of sulphur, including us who hadn’t showered after the previous night… Sadly the wonderland cost $30 and I was the only one who wanted to do go around, and the others had stuff to do in town, which was about 35km away. We left there and headed in Rotorua.

Danielle, Brady, Sharon and Mark had all decided to go zorbing (rolling down a hill in a giant inflatable ball), something which I wasn’t overly fussed about, so I spent the arrest of the morning and early afternoon writing my diary and snoozing in the local library.

We all met up later and drove to one of Dan’s (Maggie’s boyfriend and our friend) friends houses in Ohope, a couple of hours north. We arrived and went straight to the local Charter Club, which had a snooker table, awesome! 2 and a half dinners, 2 frames of snooker and a couple of beers later we headed back to Derek’s and watched Slumdog Millionaire before bed. Not the most eventful day, but nice nonetheless.

The next day we awoke to pouring rain. A couple of hours of driving later stopped for lunch, got food and carried on to Hahei, which is where the famous and stunningly beautiful Cathedral Caves are, or for a more visual description; opening scene of second Narnia movie. Yup, pretty epic! The rain had eased off by this point, so we drove to Cathedral Caves via some very flooded roads. After arriving at the car park near the caves we walked for 30 minutes to the coves. We were pretty much by ourselves on the beach, and the five of us spent some time wandering around in awe of the place, and just marvelling at its beauty. After about an hour other people came and we left. When we got to the top of the cliffs the sun was beginning to set, so I sat watching that for some time before we all left. I realised that my timescales here haven’t added up to anywhere near a day, the time in-between us getting up and sunset was also filled with stops at random places as well the caves!

We found a campsite nearby which let us have a small chalet to ourselves for $100 (£40) for a night, bargain! The chalet had a kitchen, living room and 2 bedrooms, perfect for us. This became another evening of relaxing, we watched George of the Jungle (my choice), failed at doing a puzzle by the end of the night, ate, I drank a fejoia beer (fejoia is a fruit that (to me and Rosie Jones) is disgusting. It tastes like dentist and nastyness) and people that started watching a movie called Napoleon, which was absolutely hideous. It was a bout a do going on adventure who could talk to other animals. I guess getting all of the animals to act is impressive, but it was still hideous. I went to bed and left the others watching it.

Near Cathedral Caves there’s a place called Hot Water beach, which is a beach that has hot springs on it under the sand (surprisingly!). You can only get to them at low tide, which was at 3am that morning. We got up around 1am and headed out. The tide was fairly low, but the sea was rough. After a fair bit of searching Brady and I found some hot springs. They were damn hot. You’d stand on the stand and could feel the soles of your feet burning, crazy. The tide was still too high to make sand pools to bathe in, so we messed around on the beach for a fair while. It was getting to be late autumn there, but we were still out in just shorts and t shirts and were fine. Sadly the sea was too rough and kept washing over the area where the hot springs were and we couldn’t build any pools, so at 3 we headed back to our chalet and slept.

The next day, as I’m sure everyone will agree, was by far my least favourite day of the trip. We did a lot of driving, interspersed with only a few breaks. I shall keep this days description brief. We drove around the Cormandel peninsula to the town of Cormandel where I had an amazing chicken and kumra pie. After a wander around the town, more driving, a brief stop at a lookout and more driving until we were past Auckland where we stopped for lunch. Then more driving to Dan’s parents house, in Whakatane (pronounced faka-tarn-ay – wh – ‘f’ sound). Dan’s parents were absolutely fantastic to us; they put us up and gave us food in exchange for some wine! I was fairly pissed off with the day by this point so went to the beach by myself for some air. Being stuck in a car all day listening to a lot of music which I strongly dislike really grates! I returned and we spent the evening watching TV and chatting with his parents before hitting the hay.

When we woke up the next day it was absolutely chucking it down. Another day which, to be honest, was not my favourite! We did a fair bit of driving again, but at least I got to drive some of it. Firstly we went to Waitangi where the treaty was signed between the Maoris and the English, and it was still raining. Only Sharon was willing to pay to get in, so the rest of us sat in the car and played cards whilst she did that. I also went inside a Maori meeting house by myself, and well all went and looked at some big Maori carvings nearby. Interestingly, the carvings at places such as museums and in public spaces differ very much to these rural ones; these carvings were ridiculously well hung!

I then drove back, but we went a different route which involved getting a ferry across an inlet and taking a smaller, more coastal road back. This really wasn’t the best idea ever, as the road was flooded in parts and blooming scary to drive through! That night we cooked for Dan’s parents and spent a lot of time talking before going to bed,

This next day (a Saturday) was the last day that I was travelling with the others for; they were flying back to Christchurch early on Sunday morning for exams which were taking place the following week. I got up earlier than the others to go to an oil refinery visitors centre nearby (there was a big refinery up there right by the beach), but sadly it was closed. The weather this day was better, but still not ideal. To being with we went to the beach for a frolick, and then to some local caves which were pretty flooded and very slippery, so we didn’t do any exploring, just looked around for a while.

After much umming and ahhing we drove to the south west of the Northlands to a black sand beach. The weather wasn’t particularly great, but it wasn’t raining at least. Brady and I started the beach time by jumping off some massive sand dunes and running around a lot. We then went to the other end of the beach, and saw some crazy, crazy fishermen. The sea was pretty rough, and about 8 fishermen were all standing on a big rock outcrop with their rods jammed into holes in the rock. They would then leave the rods and run to them when they got a bite. Waves kept crashing over the top of the rocks and washing past the rods, it was nuts!

We were standing in shorts and nothing else at this point, and it started to get cold, so we ran up to the top of the cliff to have a look around. Below us was a gannet nesting colony which was empty sadly. It looked like masses of mini craters where the birds would build their nests. In the sea far below a few hardcore surfers were going for it by the rocks in some very choppy waves. We eventually got too cold and ran back to the others, when it started to rain. We all bundled back into the car and headed to Auckland.

It was odd, I’d started my NZ trip and Dane’s, and now I was finally back there. After a lot of parking confusion we got there, and the others met Rebecca, Matho, Dane and Julian. We all went for a wander around town and to the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere (apparently). For such a big tower it has a very small base and is quite incredible. Then to an oriental restaurant, where we were the only people who weren’t Asian. The food was good, and the side dishes which kept being brought were awesome!

We headed back to Dane’s and the others packed their bags, getting ready to leave super early the next morning. It was all pretty sad. At a very early hour of the morning the others got up and we all said our last goodbyes. It was really emotional for me; I’d been with these people almost everyday for the past few months, and I didn’t know when I’d be seeing them again, if ever. They left and I went back to sleep.

Thus ends my time of travelling with the others, and it only took me 6 weeks to write up! Now for the last part of NZ….