Wonderfully Wild Adventure

  So the buried village is like New Zealand’s mini Pompeii. It was quite a sad thing to go around and imagine all the 150 lives lost in a volcanic eruption, and the loss of the Eight Wonder of the World - the Pink Terraces. But we were glad we did it as it was a good bit of history of that area. Plus the end of the walk there was Te Wairere Falls which was stunning. Blue Lake Green Lake Don’t know about you, but they look the same colour to us!

  We did something a bit different and parked on someones drive as opposed to staying on a campsite! It was really wonderful! Not only did we get our own bathroom and hot shower, there was a kitchen for us to use and a washing machine (luxury in campervaning life)! Pam and Neville were wonderful hosts and are just an amazing retired couple who do so much for other people. They lent us some kayaks and we ventured out onto the lake but only for about 15 minutes as the wind caught up and it got quite rough! Plus we were both quite wet from getting into the kayaks! We also went for a lovely walk around the bush to the wishing tree and back. We were meant to go there at night to see the glow worms but ended up falling asleep! And then on Will’s birthday Pam had made a small cake for him, which just shows how lovely they are! A lovely experience which has opened up our options and will now be looking at staying on more peoples driveways!  The view of the lake at Pamela's Drive Here are s

  Stacey’s 25th Birthday Much to Stacey’s disappointment we had to hang around Auckland for her birthday as we were waiting on our vans heating to be fixed. But we made the most of it and took a boat trip to Waiheke Island which is a very peaceful island, no one lives there anymore but there are a few summer houses that people come out and stay in when the weather is nice. It used to have quite a bit of a community, but has sort of been forgotten about now. Will’s 25th Birthday For Will’s birthday we were in Rotorua, a city that was disappointing for us really, wouldn’t go back in a hurry. But we went and had lunch at the top of a mountain Stratosphere, by which we had to go up cable cars (Gondola’s is what they are called here, so you can imagine Staceys confusion when booking the trip!). Then we went down the mountain twice on some Luges, which are basically like go karts without the engine! Was great fun! Couldn’t understand at the bottom why you could buy 7 or 10 Luges trips, we we