Update: **For those of you who have not been reading the full posts (we completely understand) you may have missed our photos page which has heaps more photos than are on this post. Head to our Week 2 InFocus page for a look at even more photos related to the post below!**

We’re finally getting to another post… in our little bit of free time that we’ve had to work on the blog in the past few weeks Malcolm has been struggling with photo management and Jess has been typing away on her little iPad to make sure we had words to go with the pictures.

In this week’s adventures we left Auckland in search for more sunshine. After some debate we decided to stick to our original plan and head to the Coromandel Peninsula which worked out great as we were rewarded with a day of mostly sunny driving and a beautiful beach to hang out at all afternoon till sundown. After an exciting ‘alternate route’ drive to the other side of the Peninsula we arrived at our second NZ hostel (much nicer than the first) a little past 9pm. From there we enjoyed another beach day before a good drive to the Central North Island where we would visit the Hobbiton movie set and Waitomo glow worm caves. From there we headed back to Auckland to drop off Joe so he could continue his crazy adventure in New Orleans for Mardis Gras while Jessica and Malcolm headed north to Paihia for a quick adventure in the Bay of Islands and Northland. The last day we headed back to Auckland yet again for our 3rd NZ flight, this time back to the South Island and Te Anau. Below are daily summaries with a few pictures. See the link below for the weekly photo dump.

Update: **For those of you who have not been reading the full posts (we completely understand) you may have missed our photos page which has heaps more photos than are on this post. Head to the Week 1 InFocus page for a look at even more photos related to the post below!**

Hello! We’re a little over 3 weeks into our travels and finally finding a little time to get some things done – mostly because we’re on a 3 hour ferry ride from Picton to Wellington – but more importantly it has internet that is more reliable than the hostels!

We arrived in Queenstown NZ, our first stop, on February 15th. We had originally planned to stay on the North Island for a while until our buddy Joe could meet up with us but Malcolm found a marathon in Queenstown that looked too crazy to pass up. So we switched our plans around, adjusted our final destination and set off! The marathon was three days after we landed, on Saturday the 18th – we figured the three days before would be enough to get over jet lag and somewhat acclimate to the high 70 degree weather as we were leaving a relatively cold winter in Seattle with temps consistently hovering around freezing.