Geology in the North Island

After Fox Glacier, we had a couple of days steady drive to Picton for the ferry crossing to the North Island. Stopped off in a few places along the way including Pancake Rocks (rocks that look like pancakes) and a seal colony. We expected to see 3 seals at most, but there were over 100 and even some pups playing with each other on the rocks!

We didn't hang about in Wellington, looked nice, but you had to pay to park, so we went straight north towards Tongariro National Park. We were hoping to do a day trek across the volcanoes - including Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings! Unfortunately the weather wasn't great on the peaks - snowy, cloudy and cold, so we couldn't go. Instead we went on a couple of really nice shorter walks in the volcanic valleys, around lava flows and rock falls. Speaking of falls... I did, and ripped my trousers - dangerous things these volcanoes.

I'm slowly turning Kate into a bit of a geologist, and after glaciers and volcanoes we moved onto the geothermal areas of Taupo and Rotorua. These places are weird! You see steam coming out of the ground all over the place and pools of bubbling mud! Our campsite in Rotorua was geothermally heated and had a hot spa and steam oven. We tried cooking our mussels in the steam oven, but it took too long, so had to do them on the hob! (a kilo of huge green mussels -for a quid!). Wasn't all geeky though - we spent a day racing luges down the hill and terrifying ourselves on the Sky Swing (bungee swing on a hill over Rotorua)! We even saw some Kiwi birds in the wildlife park. (oh - Kiwi fruit, 20p a kilo - who knew they came from New Zealand?)

Our last couple of days in the van were spent cruising around the Coromandel Peninsula. Wonderful coastline with big green hills and windy roads. We visited Hot Water Beach and tried to dig our own hot pool - didn't quite work, as we missed the tide... but if you buried your feet in the sand under the water, you could feel the hot spring water! Pretty cool!

We were both a bit sad to return the campervan, we had a great time and is strange to have had the same accommodation for so long! Auckland has been cool - we've seen more volcanoes and climbed the biggest. Also saw a Maori Cultural Show at the museum, where they did the Haka. Another box ticked for NZ.

We're off to the Cook Islands this afternoon, and we'll arrive yesterday... this dateline thing is very confusing.