Around 75% of the entire population of New Zealand lives in Auckland. Which is strange, as the city seems so unlike the rest of the country. The pace, for one, is about twice as fast as anywhere else in New Zealand, and it also seems that restaurants stay open after 8pm!

We stayed at a beach-side campsite in Takapuna, a suburb on the North Shore, from which we commuted into the city on the Devonport Ferry. Auckland has been called 'Sydney with training wheels' and you can easily understand why. Approaching the city on the ferry is a very similar experience to that of Sydney's Manly ferry, but despite Auckland's skyscrapers and the fairground appeal of the Sky Tower, the skyline is noticeably more downscale than its Aussie cousin. You could describe this as typical Kiwi understatement vs. brash Aussie showmanship, but to be honest I think we both missed the wow factor of Sydney's Opera-House / Harbour Bridge combo.

Our first day in town we took a walking tour of the city, from the ferry terminal in the CBD up through trendy Chancery District into Albert Park, which sits on a hill that would have looked out over the city had the skyscrapers not got in the way. We dropped by a redux version of the Auckland Art Museum (the main museum is currently being refurbed) and saw an interesting exhibition of 18th century Maori portraits by two famous artists of their day: Charles Goldie & Gottfried Lindauer. As misguided public opinion of the day was that the Maori were a 'dying race' the pictures tended to have a melancholy air very similar to the old portraits you see of Native Americans.

There are lots of building works in Auckland as the city prepares itself for next year's Rugby World Cup. As a part of this facelift the next stop on our tour, the civic centre, was fenced off and crawling with hard working hard hats. We circumvented the site and then trekked south up the hill through Myers Park to uber-trendy the St Kevin's Arcade, full of boutique fashion brands, vintage clothing and comic book stores. Flagging after the accumulated exertions of 3 weeks on the road, we then very gratefully retreated to an Odeon cinema to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – Our last English cinema experience for who knows how long?

It was fun to be back in a city again, especially on a Friday afternoon with its boozy lunches and pre-weekend buzz, but at the same time our impression of Auckland was that some of the things we liked best about New Zealand – the laid-back pace, the always-friendly people, their lack of pretence and sense of humour – were somehow missing, ditched in the race to become a modern global city. Maybe I'm just more of a Southern Man...



The following day we woke up early to catch the ferry out to Rangitoto volcano. What a great name! Rangitoto is Maori for 'Bloody Sky', a description its last eruption 'only' 600 years ago. Whatever it means, it's definitely fun to chant in a tribal fashion a la Joe vs The Volcano. RAN-GI-TO-TO-RAN-GI-TO-TO. The whole of the Auckland region is pockmarked with active and dormant volcanoes, to which it owes its bumpy landscape. My GCSE geography allowed me to classify Rangitoto as a classic 'shield' volcano (thanks Mr McGrath) whose gentle sides were relatively easy to walk up. It started to rain as we got to the crater rim, but we still got a great view of the bay and the city in the distance.

We spent our final 24 hours in Auckland preparing for Phase 3 of our Grand Tour: South America. This involved washing all our clothes, eating one last meal of fish&chips, attempting to clean the van and conceal a dent I'd put in the rear bumper, and purchasing vast quantities of western medicine. We've been diligently listening to our Michel Thomas Introductory Spanish on the car stereo over the last 5 weeks, so here's hoping we'll be up to the challenges of a new language and a new continent!

As we were already pretty far north and had some time to spare, we decided to fill the tank and make a mad dash up the Aupouri Peninsula to Cape Reinga – where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, and where Maori souls go when they die...

The Peninsula is around 100km long and 10-20km wide – a long spit pointing out from the mainland to the north-east. Its eastern coast has a few spectacular bays, mostly named by Mr Cook on his tour, and beyond the forests the western coast is lined by the unbroken sands of Ninety Mile Beach.

Most of the supposedly gorgeous scenery was hidden from us by heavy mists that floated in from the sea. As we drove further north the farmlands thinned to sheep-tended heath, and we left the mists behind as the road wound upwards towards the cliffs of the cape.

At the end of the Earth, there was a car park. We parked up. In the last ten minutes of our drive the temperature had suddenly dropped and more mist streamed across the clifftops from west to east. A suitably spooky setting for the entrance to the afterlife.

The Cape itself is marked by a lighthouse that watches over the merging of the Tasman and the Pacific like a referee. They don't play nice. Looking out over the water you can see slow giant whirlpools forming, white clashing waves and jagged zig zag tears where Sea and the Ocean meet.

Just to the east of the lighthouse is the most sacred site in Maoridom – an 800 year old pohutukawa tree growing out of a rocky outcrop. It is down through this tree's roots that Maori souls enter the afterlife. There were plenty of signs in the area asking us to refrain from eating, drinking or smoking whilst on the Cape out of respect for this sacred site. On the way back to the car park we met a group of young Maori guys who seemed pretty determined to flout as many of these rules as possible. Fags in one hand, Smirnoff Ice and Speight's in the other, they swaggered down the path towards the lighthouse in jeans and wife-beaters. One pointed out the tree to another with his beer; 'Yeah, so this is where our souls go when we die bro.'

On the way back down the coast we took a detour to get to the Ninety Mile Beach. It nearly proved to be a one way trip as the road gave way to muddy gravel, then sand. We parked the van before we got stuck, and walked out over the grassy dunes onto the beach. The sun was making a valiant effort to shine through the encroaching clouds, and the sand shone in the incoming tide.

After leaving the beach, we drove past a roadside stall selling Hangi in a Pie for $3.50.

Driving into the outskirts of town we were greeted by the sight of steam rising into the darkening sky, seeping out from the earth itself. Scary stuff. We knew that there were geysers and hot springs and fueroles (where steam rises straight out of holes in the ground) in Rotorua, but we hadn't quite imagined just how many there were or how widespread they are. They're all over the place! The whole town is built on angry land. We drove through neigbourhoods where every house has a 6 foot pipe stuck into their front yard with billowing smoke coming out of it, and on our last night in town a bus driver pointed out where they had had a 'mini-eruption' 2 years ago by the side of the road in a small park. Surely it can't be sensible to hang around here?!

For some reason, instead of doing the obvious thing and getting as far away as possible, early Maori tribes saw the smoke, explosive water and bubbling mud and decided that this would be a nice place to settle down in, making Rotorua the spiritual centre of their culture. With this rich history to draw upon and ever increasing numbers of tourists to satisfy, Rotorua has become something of a 'Maori Disneyland'.

The worst of this was our trip to a 'Maori Cultural Performance'. I suppose we should have guessed from the name what it would be like. Started by an enterprising couple of guys called the Tamaki Brothers (who are apparently pretty gangsta according to the locals) in the 80s, the company drives tourists out to a reconstructed 'traditional Maori village' where Maori actors demonstrate the Haka and some other traditional rituals and entertainments before piling everyone into a large dining hall for a Hangi (earth oven cooked) buffet dinner. It felt like Butlins, and not in a good way. Sarah and I were less impressed by the performances than by the business. It cost around 100 NZD each, and in summer they can cater for up to 700 people a night, 7 days a week! Well done the Tamaki boys.

We breathed a sigh of relief when we boarded the bus home, only to discover that worse was yet to come. Our 'hilarious' bus driver forced all passengers to sing, by nationality, on the ride home (Sarah and I belted out a passable Welsh National Anthem having not been able to come up with a 'typical English song' Aside: What would you say is a typical English song? Aside from that dirge of a National Anthem? Answers on a postcard...) and when someone refused – a pair of petrified young Japanese women – the bus was driven around and around a roundabout, six times, until someone helped them out. Oh what fun we had...

Our best Maori experience was a visit to the hot springs to see the geysers Pohutu and The Prince of Wales' Feathers (thus named when the man himself visited and claimed that water spraying from the geyser looked like his heraldic badge). As well as telling us a bit about the history of the hot springs, our guide Mel was a font of information about the early Maori settlers – from how they made warm clothes from plants (as there were no cattle or sheep in New Zealand when they arrived), to the symbolic significance of the various buildings in a traditional settlement. I was interested to find out that for the first few hundred years after they arrived from Polynesia the Maori were a very peaceful people. That was until they had hunted all the easy prey to extinction and had to start fighting for land to farm.

Rotorua has been a tourist mecca for over a hundred years. The biggest leftover from the Grand Tours of our predecessors is the Victorian Bath House, where well-off foreigners used to come to 'take the waters'. By all accounts the Baths were awful, even by Victorian standards. Not only is the water so corrosive that the place had to be shutdown one week after opening to clean all the pipes – the first of many maintenance issues – but the treatments they devised were absolutely horrific. Our fave was the 'electrified bath' which involved the strategic application of direct currents to people's baths. Apparently good for treating those with a nervous disposition.

Nowadays the building serves as the town's museum. As well as seeing some of the original bathing equipment, we also saw a great exhibition about the All-Maori B Battalion's exploits during WW2, as well as an awesome video about the volcanic eruption of 1918 which featured a young Bret from Flight of the Conchords as a British tourist who gets killed when his house collapses.

Napier is famous amongst architectural students as its architecture is almost entirely Art Deco in style. Similar to Innisfail in Australia, an earthquake occurred here in 1931 and demolished most of Napier's brick buildings, all of which were then rebuilt according to the fashion of the day. But not just because it was fashionable (so James tells me) – it was also the cheapest and the safest means of building known at the time. We did a little walking tour around the centre, admiring some of the more outrageous buildings, including St John's Cathedral and the Telegraph newspaper. Overall I think I actually preferred Innisfail – though smaller, it felt like more was being done to preserve the style of the place, even with the more modern buildings being constructed. Napier felt altogether more of a living, breathing, working city. That said, it being a sunny Saturday morning, it seemed like a lovely place to grab brunch with friends, and we passed many people doing just that.

I was grateful to set foot on the north island after a very rough crossing from the south. I felt sick for approximately 80% of the journey, which I'm sure was entirely due to the waves, and nothing at all to do with my morning of wine-tasting. As it was already early evening, and raining, we decided to head straight to our campsite and not venture to the city until the morning.

Having already driven some 2000 km over the past week and a bit, James faced yet more driving as we embarked upon the longest journey so far: from the West Coast cross-country to the East Coast. In order to break the journey a little, we drove the first stretch immediately after our Glacier Day, heading up to Greymouth that night. Greymouth is a little coastal town with a pebble beach. We had a quick walk around, but didn't stick around long, especially when we found out the McDonalds here in New Zealand don't have wifi. Shocking.

We spent a very pleasant day and night in Arrowtown, a small village which looks like something out of the Wild West. Little wonder when you know it was originally settled as a gold-mining town in the 1860s, following the discovery of gold in the Arrow River (after they'd been initially drawn to the Shotover). As James mentioned, a lot of the prospectors came from Australia, but there was also a sizable contingent of Chinese men in search of their fortune. We visited the Chinese settlement, a little row of houses just outside of town, which has been partly reconstructed by the local tourist association. It's a pretty depressing place – the Chinese were hugely ostracised by the European community and 1 in 7 died as a result of their poor living conditions. That said, their resilience in the face of such hostile circumstances is pretty staggering: the last Chinese man living in the settlement survived until 1925.

Milford Sound is probably the number one tourist attraction in the South Island. It's found in the Fjordlands – an enormous national park full of mountains, lakes (Sarah: 'New Zealand. It's all just mountains and lakes really, isn't it?') and fjords, which we learned are flooded valleys that have been carved out by glaciers. To get there from Queenstown is a 5 hour drive, and as we wanted to be there first thing in the morning for better views and less crowds, we decided to stop halfway in quiet lakeside Te Anau, which sits at the border between the rolling arable Southlands and the more aggressive Fjordlands.

After a picnic lunch parked in our van by lake Te Anau we went for a walk along the shore, staring out over the water at the forbidding mountains we were going to be driving through the next day. I tried to teach Sarah how to skim stones but she somehow managed to throw a rock at herself (from her left hand, into her upper right arm. Unbelievable) so to avoid any further Queenstown-esque injuries I suggested we maybe give the skimming a rest and head back.

The next morning we woke up early and were on the road to Milford Sound by 6.30. I was a little edgy about the drive as the road through the Fjordlands can be treacherous, and had been shut the previous week due to snow. We had snowchains in the boot, but I wasn't too keen to try them out. We were lucky: One valley still had a good dusting of snow on the road, but the rest were fine. Despite piloting what is essentially a large fibreglass box on wheels, the drive was fantastic. We entered the national park as the sun was rising, so we got to watch the mist that filled the valleys burn away to reveal snow-capped mountains and dense forest. We reached the Sound 5 minutes before our cruise left and were soon chugging out from the harbour with pockets full of Cookie Monster cookies for the trip.
Milford Sound was discovered by a Welshman called John Grono, who landed there to shelter from a storm. He named the place Milford as he thought it looked a lot like his home town of Milford Haven. I've been to Milford Haven. I reckon he must have been at sea for a bit too long. John was also mistaken in calling Milford a Sound. Milford is actually a fjord – a flooded valley carved by glaciers, as opposed to a Sound which is carved by rivers. Milford Fjord is pretty hard to say though, so they left the name alone.

Whatever it's called, it was actually carved out by no less than 6 different glaciers of different sizes, which resulted in several 'hanging valleys' - smaller shallower valleys that join onto the larger deeper ones, emptying their rivers down into the Sound in dramatic waterfalls. So that we could experience these waterfall in all their glory, our boat captain steered us right in under one of them. We managed to stand out on the foredeck for about 10 seconds before being totally drenched. Woke us up a bit after our early start anyway.

The whole cruise was incredible, but our favourite part was when a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins playing in the bay came over to investigate our boat, and then hung around us for twenty minutes, surfing the water that our boat's prow pushed out in front of it. They were clearly having a great time – jumping out of the water, spinning onto their backs and swooping around each other. The whole boat was crowded onto the bow, leaning over the rails to watch them.

...The advice New Zealand Prime Minister John Key gave at an award ceremony for high achieving high school kids. Awesome.

He then went on to compare their evidently winning attitude to that of the All-Blacks, and their likely victory in the 2011 World Cup: '...[their winning attitude] is why they should win the World Cup next year. Of course if they don't, I'm going to tazer Richie McCaw'.

Name me another country where the PM can even jokingly threaten a national sports team captain with violence. Or one where tazering someone would be top of mind...

Twisty roads hacked into canyon walls lead us into Queenstown. Lord of the Rings type scenery. Lots of tors and vales and mountains.

This little huddle of smart buildings on the shores of Lake Wakatipu was once a tiny farming town until two yokels discovered gold in the Shotover River in 1856. Experienced and novice prospectors from Australia and China descended en masse, mining the place dry within 40 years. After that, Queenstown was left for dead until its two very ski-able mountain ranges and gorgeous lake facilitated a reincarnation in the 1950s as a tourist mecca. This reputation as a Destination was then turbo-charged in the 90s as aggressive geography and the lax Kiwi safety regulations enabled it to become the self-proclaimed Extreme Sports Capital of the World.

We arrived in Queenstown late in the afternoon after a long drive from Dunedin. Like Methven, being in Queenstown brings back lots of memories from my snowboarding holiday with Axit, Ed and Will. I'm sure I bored Sarah stupid with an unprompted tour of the town centre: '...and this is Winnie's where I wore my potted plant fancy dress outfit and some guy tried to piss on me', 'That's the Southern Laughter where we drank sake in the hot tub and Axit threw up in a bin', 'Over there is the Subway where Will used to order double-meat foot-longs after a hard day at the Remarks'. 'This is the spot where I nearly drove Ed and myself into a bus'. It was good to be back.

Before the shops shut that evening we were able to hire snowboarding gear and lift tickets for the following day at The Remarkables ski resort. (Opinion is divided as to whether this name is due to the fact that the mountains simply look 'remarkable' or whether they are more scientifically named as remarkable as they are one of only two mountain ranges in the world that run directly north-south. Having met a number of Kiwis, my money's on the former reason). As we only had one day in our itinerary to get up the mountain, I persuaded Sarah to try snowboarding for the day. I dredged up all the lessons I remembered from when I learned and barraged Sarah with them all at once: 'Pretend you're sitting on a toilet', 'Do less', 'Imagine you're carrying a tea tray', 'Look as cool as possible'. Despite all this good advice Sarah did incredibly well, and by the end of the day was casually swooping back and forth down the mountain.

To celebrate her achievement, I suggested that we sit on our boards and toboggan down the last 20 metres to car park where the bus was waiting to pick us up and drive us back to Queenstown. I reached the bottom before Sarah, and as I turned to watch her coast the last few metres and get ready to dish out the hi-fives, she held up a right hand, dripping with blood.

In the doctor's in Queenstown we learned that she had when she caught her thumb under the board edge she had sliced completely through her skin and right down to the joint capsule, just missing the tendons. We also learned that I'll be of absolutely no use during child-birth as I nearly passed out – twice – whilst she had a couple of stitches put in.

The upside of the whole experience for Sarah, aside from discovering a natural snowboarding (but not tobogganing) ability, is that her stitches prevent her from doing any cooking or washing up for the remainder of the trip.

Dunedin is the largest town in the Otago region. Settled as a sealing and whaling town in 1848, it has a massive Scottish heritage: 'Dunedin' is the old Gaelic word for 'Edinburgh' and there are apparently more piping bands here than in the whole of Scotland.

New Zealand is famous for its wildlife, including dolphins, sea lions, albatross, and PENGUINS. Somewhat by chance, we ended up having a Penguin Day pretty early on in our NZ adventure.

The last time I was in Methven was with my friends Axit, Eddie and Will at the start of a 6 week, post-uni, pre-work snowboarding holiday. Methven is the nearest town to the awesome Mount Hutt. Back in 2004, having heard they'd had a big dump of snow, we were keen to get up the mountain for fresh tracks the following morning.

With green fields and rolling hills beneath us, this was my first thought as we came into land at Christchurch. From the air, New Zealand looks remarkably similar to home, and Christchurch is advertised as “NZ's most English city.” It was founded in 1850 on the orders of the Church of England, and as a result, there is a church on almost every corner. Whilst the religious influence has declined (over one third of the population now claim to have no religious beliefs at all), the English heritage is still obvious: you can enjoy being punted down the Avon river by a fellow dressed in straw boater and tweed, as you admire the architecture on the Oxford and Cambridge banks, including statues of Queen Victoria and Captain Cook. It's pretty surreal.