Jack & Di's Lake Road Lodge Rotorua

... even let me use the shower cubicle in the gents - How civilised. <br>I drove just around the corner on to some industrial estate and found a cheap greasy spoon cafe, where I tucked into a huge full English.. Bloody lovely! <br>When I left Chile, I was 3 hours behind the UK - I am now 12 hours in front. <br>This whole country has a feel of England about it, the language, the countryside, the ...

... lovely track the next day, Joss limping along with his dodgy old ski knee injury, but battered and bruised it was still worth it. Wasn't it Joss?<br>We headed to Marlbourough after that and explored the Sound (Nelson scallops on our own private beach washed down with a bottle of the local chilled sauvignon blanc...) then headed into wine country itself and had a great day exploring the Marlborough wineries from our hired bikes. AMAZING! Totally accesible and also free ...

... has been mostly taken down, but part of it was left due to heavy rains when they were taking things down. Then they realized that they could make it a tourist attraction, so the rest of the set was left. There were originally 37 hobbit holes, and now there are only 17 left. It was interesting to hear how they found this particular farm that suited their purposes, then had the New Zealand army build a road of 1 ...

... Taiwan &amp; individually wired on to the dead tree by university students. Generators were brought in to run base camp &amp; the film equipment, logistics of power, water &amp; sewerage all had to be considered, and up to 400 people per day had to be catered for, three meals a day.<br><br>Once the filming had been completed, Newline Cinema had to revert everything back to it's previous state, however, due to a particularly bad storm, they were prevented from destroying all of it. In ...

... the constant eggy/sulphur odour comes from. Its mad to think that 70,000 people live here but according to the locals you don't even notice the smell after a few days which is true enough I suppose. We got dropped off at a backpackers called Crash Palace, not our first choice but it turned out to be one of the best hostels we've stayed in for ages. The owner was a really sound guy and we got an amazing room for a good price. I think maybe we were expecting every ...

... very wet, but we were driving upmost of the day, Sat was lovely and sunny, we went to Hot Water Beach, very strange, digging holes in the beach( or using other peoples when then had finished!) and the water just got hotter and hotter until the waves splashed over into the pools and cooled them down. Now in Auckland airport with a long wait ahead of us and a long flight, Quite sorry to be leaving NZ but excited as to what is ahead!!

... intense cultural day, we checked Rotorua off of our "to do" list and next morning we headed for Wellington. On the way we stopped and took a few photos of the Huka waterfall, but we didn't want to make another dent in the budget and said "no" to a jet boating tour that would have taken us straight into the base of the waterfall. Instead, we've spent our time and money in a honey farm shop, looking in amazement at what an industry these people could make out of the ...

... example a piece of land near the vegetable garden is always a good choice. If the hole is to be dug in the lawn remove the top layer of grass and put it back afterwards. c) Wind direction which could blow over the stack or endanger buildings. Keep a watchful eye on your fire and make sure it is well away from buildings, trees or anything that which may catch a flying spark. Make sure it is at least 3 metres away from the nearest object and nowhere near any overhead ...

... taking the photos. In the evening we booked a cultural Maori experience at the local Mitai village, where we ate traditional hungi food (food that is baked under the ground) and watched a cultural performance. It is customary in Maori tribe tradition (like many tribal villages the world over) to make a peace offering to the chief before being granted access to the village. As such we had to nominate a person from our group who would play the part of this ...