How to do New Zealand in a week - part 1

We knew this was going to be a challenge, as most people we have spoken to are spending at least a month here!

Going back a week, we spent a day in Auckland which is a much nicer city than we expected it to be. Lots of people had said that there wasn't much to it, so we arrived there with no real expectations. We picked up lots of leaflets from our hostel - it's great that there is so much info available as we don't have a guidebook - and strolled into town. We quickly found that it is a really easy place to wander round, helped by the sunshine, and we headed up through the city centre and through a really pretty park to the Auckland Museum. This promised to give us an overview of all things Kiwi, and as we didn't know much about the country we thought it would be a good place to start.

There was lots of interesting stuff on display, but we weren't too impressed with the layout as it wasn't very easy to follow especially when trying to get our heads round the historical aspects. Nevertheless we came away knowing much more than we started with. It was also very odd to be listening to flutes playing Christmas carols in the foyer area (many a happy memory of my flute playing youth!) as up until that point I really hadn't realised that Christmas was only 3 weeks away...

Anyway, we then moved on the Sky Tower to get some good views of the city. I won't bore you with the details, but it is very tall and suffice to say I felt very brave standing on the glass floor even though it was 38mm thick! Some comedy photos to follow...And that was pretty much all we had time for in Auckland! I should also add that one of the things that struck us was how quiet the city is - it was hard to believe that it is home to a million people. However everyone we did meet was very friendly, something that has continued all week. Not only is tourism a big industry, but also there does seem to be a genuine friendliness which is really good.

Our next stop was Rotorua, about 4 hours away. When we were sorting out our trip we came across a company called Nakedbus, the Kiwi equivalent of Megabus in the UK with fares starting from just $1. We therefore weren't too sure what we were going to get for our very small amount of money, but it was all fine. Unfortunately the hostel in Rotorua was a little more shabby, but then really we only had ourselves to blame for booking into somewhere with a TexMex theme and as we were only there for one night we could live with it!

The town itself was pretty ordinary, but the big draw is the thermal springs in the area. There is a massive amount of geothermal activity in the region, and just wandering through a park in the town you can see lots of steaming pools and bubbling mud. As recommended by Nina who we met in Chile (thank you if you're reading this!) we decided to head the Polynesian Spa on Tuesday and spend some time relaxing in the rock pools. It was a really lovely way to spend a few hours, and I also had a massage to help soothe my very backpack weary shoulders. Sadly it was then time to return to the backpacks and another bus, this time to Napier.

As you know, we have travelled on a few buses in the past few months (I think we were up to about 140 hours at the last count) but this trip has won the prize for funniest bus driver... He started sharing local knowledge which was really interesting, but promptly ran out of things to say but just kept talking - for three and a half hours! We arrived in Napier totally exhausted, but it was another bizarre and entertaining experience to add to the list. We checked into our hostel which couldn't have been more different from the last one - Art Deco style which is what Napier is famous for and a former luxury hotel so much better than average - and felt quite happy that we were going to be staying in the same place for a whole 2 nights!