“Drive through Rotorua with Stephen, our local guide. See the famous Geysers, thermal mud pools and hot rocks. Join helicopter, met pilot, Luke, take off and drop off some food supplies to workers half way up the Volcano. Breathtaking views all round.

We then flew to the top of Mount Tarawera, NZ's largest historic eruption and landed on the volcano crater itself ......in the clouds. Collected some volcanic rock (now in a glass bowl in Churt) and flew on stopping to look at Tarawera Falls – a beautiful waterfall that simply appeared out of the rock face. We then flew over what is the Southern Hemisphere’s largest forest.

Continued flying to ... we knew not where. We then started to land on an idyllic looking promontory sticking out in the middle of the huge volcanic lake. We found out that we were at Solitaire Lodge on Lake Tarawera and that the people holding down the umbrellas as we landed were actually the owners who had just finished laying our places for lunch!. A fine lunch with Stephen in a wonderful setting – another fine Sauvignon Blanc and a personalised printed menu as a souvenir. Suzanne felt she should have been wearing something a little more glamorous than the shorts and T shirt that she had on – did not stop her sampling some NZ Sauvignon though.

John the lovely boat owner then collected us on a golf buggy and took us to his boat where we spent the afternoon exploring on Lake Tarawera. We stopped off on a hot beach where the water was actually steaming and where we disembarked to paddle in the hot mud and waters. Enid Blyton and the Famous 5 (4 in our case) came to mind as below.

We all took a rod and the four of us cast our lines in search of Trout. After trying a couple of locations Lee gets a bite and lands Charlie – a 6 lb Trout. John the boat man did the honours and took care of the preparation so that we could take Charlie home. Suzanne also got a bite but hers got away! And it was apparently enormous too - said Suzanne!

On the drive home we stopped off at a store in the middle of nowhere that was stocked with product we could have bought (Deli type) - we did buy another Sauvignon Blanc which we opened later, just as the sun was going down .. a super prefect day!”