We've had a really nice week. We we able to meet up with friends from home, Neil and Miranda, who are holidaying in New Zealand at the moment. As well as catching up with news from home, we spent a gorgeous day walking the Tongariro Crossing with them. This starts with a steep climb up a solidified lava flow between the two volcanoes of Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe. The highlights include the deep-red crater and the brilliantly coloured emerald lakes. The crossing has been described as the best one-day walk in New Zealand, and we agree that it was super. We were exceptionally lucky with the weather too.

We stayed by Tongariro National Park for another couple of days for some other walks, then continued south to Wellington where we spent a couple of days.

This morning we took the ferry down to South Island. Tomorrow we start walking the four-day Queen Charlotte Track. The first couple of days look easy enough, but we'll see how it goes after that!

It's been a long time since we uploaded any photos, so here they are. These are pictures of our first two weeks in New Zealand. As part of the authentic New Zealand Experience, we've had a fair amount of rain, hence the gloomy shades in many of them!

We've also got a last few photos from Australia which somehow didn't make it onto the web last time... probably because they were taken afterwards! The coastal path was transformed during our last couple of days in Bondi by Sculpture by the Sea.

We've been driving around for a week now having picked up our lovely green hire car last Wednesday. We also bought ourselves a tent and some sleeping bags and have been sleeping in the great outdoors. First of all we headed north to the Bay of Islands and went on a great boat trip which included swimming with dolphins, whale watching, stopping at one of the islands and cruising through a large hole in a rock. We then went to Cape Reinga at the very top of New Zealand before driving back to Auckland staying in the wilderness of the Kauri forest on the way.

Waitomo Caves were spectacular with a wonderful glo-worm grotto where the cavern was lit by thousands of tiny lights. We're now in Rotorua and have experienced a great Maori concert and hangi and seen lots of volcanic bubbling mud and water. We had fun this afternoon hurtling down a hill in a big plastic ball full of water - otherwise known as zorbing.

We arrived safely in Auckland on Saturday. The weather started off a little grim, but it hasn't stopped us seeing a lot of the city. We've done the Coast-to-Coast walk all the way across North Island (okay, only 16km) and today we've been out to Waiheke Island, and walked along the coastal paths with some amazing scenery. Fortunately the rain has become a little more intermittent than when we arrived!

Tomorrow we pick up our hire car and start to see the rest of the country, initially heading north to the Bay of Islands.