<William> Weather has continued to be bad, and it's not been much fun touring & camping. It's rained pretty much all day every day for the past week and the forecast is for more rain for the foreseeable future.

The other night there was a big storm with 60mph winds. Our tent survived the night but at times it was blown so flat that the inner tent was touching our noses. A tree in the camping field was blown over, but missed our tent fortunately. After that night we decided to try and stay in hostels and leave the camping for a while, but it's proving difficult as one of the main holiday towns in the north was flooded out and all the holiday makers have headed south to where we are (Rotorua) and nearly every hostel & motel is fully booked. To add to our woes the car has sprung a leak (not sure where) so the car stinks of damp and all our bags and stuff got pretty wet (with no way of drying it out!).

We've been trying to find stuff to do in the rain, which has been a bit tricky, but visited some caves yesterday that were pretty spectacular. There was a large underground river that flowed through the caves that we paddled down in a boat. The conditions in the caves attract thousands of glow-worms which cling to the ceiling of the cave and dangle threads like spiders webs to catch passing insects. Lying back in the boat and looking up it looks like a starry night but with green stars!

Another thing we did whilst visiting Richard is driving along the beach. There's lots of driveable beaches in NZ, and as some are over 50 miles long and pretty wide too you can drive down them without bothering anyone. It's strange that on the entrance to the beach there's a speed limit sign of '100' - regular carrigeway rules apply (though no-one sticks to them!) It was quite a qerid experience driving down the beach skimming the incoming waves and practicing handbrake turns in the sand!

We're currently staying in Rotorua which is the town with all the geo-thermal activity. There's steam bubbling up from the drains in the streets and the whole town stinks of sulphur, which has lead to endless "(sniff sniff).... was that you?" jokes. We went to a spa today and sat in a mud bath and a variety of other hot pools which was all pretty relaxing.


I seem to have my visa application sorted now (hopefully) which buys us a few extra days touring the north island, so lets hope the weather improves - we can't take much more of this! </William> <!--12:43 AM-->