Greetings from New Zealand!

Before our flight left Los Angeles on December 26th, we spent the day in Hollywood, California. We saw the Hollywood sign (and got in trouble for taking a picture of it from a place we weren't supposed to), and went on a great hike in the Hollywood Hills. We hit Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills, then headed to Venice Beach for dinner. It was surprisingly cool there - actually Denver was a lot warmer!

We left for New Zealand (with a stop in Nadi, Fiji on the way) on Dec. 26th at 10:30pm. Since the flight to Fiji was about 9 hours and we crossed the International Date Line, we arrived at 5:30am on Dec. 28th! We did see a bit of Dec. 27th, but then crossed the Date Line and it turned into the 28th.

We made it to New Zealand with minimal troubles. We stayed the first two nights at a nice little hostel in Ponsonby - a suburb of Auckland. We went up the Sky Tower, the Southern Hemisphere's tallest building. Then we visited Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter, where we got to see penguins, sharks and more.

We then left some of our bags behind and caught a bus to the Northland area, Bay of Islands region, where we celebrated New Years. It was quite beautiful there. We spent time at the beach, hiking to Haruru Falls, and then visiting the Waitangi Treaty Center, where a famous treaty was signed by the Maori (the indigenous NZ people) and the British. It was pretty neat, as we got to see the largest war canoe in the world.

From there we hopped back on the bus to Rotorua, where there are some of the world's largest hot springs, along with many other things. We currently are on the Coromandel Peninsula just south of Auckland. We decided to rent a car, as the bus fares were adding up to the cost of having our own car. We got the car in Rotorua, and then drove here. We got to Hot Water Beach at the perfect time - low tide. It is during this time, when the water recedes, that you are able to dig a hole in the sand, which then fills with hot water from below due to the volcanic activity. We were thinking that hot meant warm, but we were very wrong. It is scalding, burning hot! It was a great experience, and a great work out digging with our rented spade. The weather has been a bit rainy, but not preventing us from doing lots of fun stuff. This morning we got up around 6am and hiked to Cathedral Cove. We are heading back to Auckland to pick up the remainder of our 250 plus pounds of luggage, then will head to Waitomo Caves, then cross to the South Island on the 8th. I'll update this again when I have the chance!