We took off the next morning on a winding road trip south towards Lake Taupo. There aren't many motorways in New Zealand. Once you get more than an hour away from Auckland it's pretty much nothing but two-lane highway with passing lanes on uphill sections. The countryside is pretty - with green rolling and humpy (I don't know how else to describe them... they're not rolling so much as... humpy) hills and blue mountains in the distance. Gorgeous really.

A few hours of pretty scenery later, we arrived in Matamata (aka Hobbiton). We found a funky little cafe playing Johnny Cash - which I'd had in my head ever since seeing Walk The Line on the plane - and sat down to a delicious and nutritious lunch. They had all kinds of crazy ephemera on the walls inside the cafe. Each of us took a little tour to read all the signs ("Viagra: The dicker picker upper") and look at the photos. I think it was the best cafe of all of the ones we went to in Australia and New Zealand.

After deciding to not shell out the insane $50 each to tour the bits of Hobbiton that the film crew left behind, we took photos in front of the "Welcome to Hobbiton" sign ($free!).

We hopped back into the car and drove for another hour or two. On the way we passed more gorgeous scenery and strange little towns - like town where all of the store signs were done in brightly coloured and sculpted corrugated tin - until we got to Rotorua.

From what I'd heard Rotorua was tourist central of North Island, so we didn't actually stop in Rotorua... but we did manage to try out Zorbing. You have to try some wild and wacky adventure activity while in New Zealand. If you don't, they string you up by your ankles and throw you off a bridge.

We thought we'd take the easiest and cheapest route and try rolling down a hill in a giant plastic ball. It was actually really fun. A Zorb is two balls; one smaller hollow ball suspended inside a larger one, with a hole from the outside through to the smaller hollow ball inside. They pour some cold water into the hot and humid inner ball and then you jump in and they zip the hole closed. You stand up and start walking down the hill, pushing the ball as you go. You're like a hamster in a giant, padded exercise ball. But you can't stand for long, since the ball starts rolling at a fast pace down the hill. It feels a little like being inside a giant washing machine - but with a lot more giggling.