Happy Christmas everyone and think of us at New Year - we shall be thinking of you - with a glass in our hands! Remember we will be seeing in the New Year 13 hours before you - so it will be lunch time the next day when you send all your drunken messages!!

Lots of Love Steve and Leila xxx

Hi all, we are off on our second trip around the North Island, so I thought I'd add a few more of the photos from the first trip.

This is a view of Shipwreck Bay from our balcony in Ahipara- at the south end of 90 mile Beach.

It looks like this the whole way, if you only look out of one side of the bus.

If you squint you can see Lei at the top of this enormous dune - part of the 90 mile Beach - which is only about 60 miles long?!?

Here we are at the very tip of the North Island - the Cape Reinga light house where the Pacific crashes in to the Tasman, well it was a nice day so it was a bit more of a ripple than a crash.

This is not an example of luxury cabin accommodation, but a Gum Diggers home - don't ask, but there is a fascinating museum all about - no really it is, I'm not joking. There are these old trees in a peat bog all facing the same way 150,000 years old!! They all were pushed down when a tsunami washed over! Stay awake I shall be asking questions later...

Here is Tane Mahuta (God of the Forest) - the largest tree in NZ - whose trunk is 6m in diameter and a length of 18m to the lowest branches, unfortunately they had chopped down one that was twice as big before they realised tourism was going to be the biggest industry! Tane is a 2000 year old Kauri tree - where the gum (not actually a gum, as this is the term for a water soluble tree extraction) comes from. Its amber and there was a bit with a spider in but Lei wouldn't look at it in the museum - I told you it was fascinating.

Back from our travels in the New Year - have a good one!