Adventures of the Black girls Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow - what a Ride!

Well our New Zealand adventure has come to an end, as we're sitting in the Auckland airport waiting for our flight to Thailand.  We've slacked on the journal updates, which we apologize for, but it's hard to get frequent computer time when you're living in a campervan! To sum up New Zealand, here is the following...

After Queenstown, we drove to Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier where we went skydiving! We jumped out of our plane from 12 000 feet, and had views of the Tasman Sea, the rainforest, the mountains, and the Glaciers. It was amazing!

Next was Abel Tasman National Park where we went Sea Kayaking and hiking. From there we went to Nelson, to meet up with distant relatives, before catching the ferry to Wellington (which is on the North Island).

Once on the North Island, we went to Tongariro National Park where we did the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing. The crossing was a 19.4 km, 6 and a half hour hike through volcanoes and craters, and with stunning views of Emerald Lakes and scenes from Lord of the Rings. (One of the volcanoes we walked on was "Mt. Doom"!)

From Turangi we drove to the Waitomo caves, where we did a Blackwater Rafting tour.  This involved crawling through pitch black caves. At some points we were up to 300 feet below the ground, and we got to see the famous Glow Worms.

Rotorua was next on the agenda, where we spent Tanis' birthday in the mud. We started the day by going Mud Quadding, and then to the famous Hells Gate mud spa. Complete with a night out on the town, and maybe one too many birthday shooters.

After taking the advice of our shuttle driver, we drove to Mt. Manganui the next day and hung out on the beach and in the cute ocean side town. We also hiked up Mt Manganui to see spectacular views.

From there we drove to Paihia which is in the Bay of Islands. In Paihia we did a Dolphin tour, but were dissappointed that we weren't able to actually swim with the dolphins because there were too many babies in the pods. It was still an awesome tour as we saw lots of dolphins and gorgeous islands. The next day we took a tour to Cape Reinga, the farthest northern point of New Zealand, where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet. We didn't realize when we booked the tour that the average person on the bus was well over 60, and we felt a little bit out of place.  However, we were impressed by the elders as they took part in the Sand Dune boarding which meant a long hike up falling sand to the top of the dune where you get on a boogey board and speed down the sand.

After Paihia we went to the Woodhill Forest where we did a Tree obstacle course. The course had 8 sections and took over 2 1/2 hours to complete. At some points in the course, we were 10m high in the trees, walking over tightropes and ziplinning from tree to tree. Thank god for our safety harnesses!!

Last stop in New Zealand was Auckland, where we stocked up on supplies for Asia and spent some time chilling in the city. We were sad to see Rooby, our campervan go... but we're super excited for the adventures that await us in Thailand. Hopefully we'll have updates from Bangkok soon.

Missing you all and wish us Good Luck at our first big culture shock on our trip. At this point we don't even know how to say "Hello" in Thai, so we need all the luck we can get!

Love,

Kristin and Tanis :)