Rotorua

Sorry its been a while again, have been up to quite a lot recently. After Kaikoura, we drove for a short while up to Picton where we caught the ferry to the North island. It was a 3 1/2 hour ride, we just relaxed in the TV room until we arrived in Wellington, NZ's capital. It made a nice change being back in a big city, have been used to arriving in small townships with hardly and people! On the way up to our room we bumped into some of our friends from the bus so we arranged to all go out that night. We spent 3 nights in Wellington and spent most of the time walking around the city, going for runs, learning a bit more about Maori culture and we also went to the theatre twice. The first play we saw was amazing, it was about Maori's fighting in the first world war in Italy. There were only 3 men in the show, but they all took on lots of different roles, dressing up as women, pretending to be pigs and all different nationalities. It was predomenantly in English but there was also a lot of Italian and Maori in it which made for a lot of comedy. The second play we saw was a mini opera for children, with children in the cast. We went to see it as it is exactly the kind of thing Ashling wants to work in, so it was good to see what NZ offers. It was all about imigrants in NZ and children learning to accept that nobody is native to NZ. We also arrived in Wellington in time for a big dragon boat festival, where teams raced in the harbour, was a great atmosphere with market stalls and the sun was out which is also a plus!

After Wellington we drove for quite a few hours to Taupo. We were signed up to do the Tongoriro crossing (which is one of the top ten walks in the world) and takes 8 hours to complete but when we got ready to leave at 6:00am, it was cancelled due to really strong winds and the likelihood of snow. Went back to bed until lunch time instead and it turned out to be a really clear, sunny day. We went for a wander and found the natural hot spring where there are small rock pools with boiling water to soak in. It was great fun, made up for missing the walk! The lake in Taupo is the biggest in Australasia, you can fit the whole of Singapore inside it, and it is actually a huge volcano with an erruption overdue by 50 years! The Maori believe that lake taupo is the heart of the fish (which is the north island), that was caught by the Maori god Maui, who caught his fish in the canoe (the canoe being the south island).

Next stop is Rotorua, which is known by the locals as Rotten-Rua due to the smell! It has a constant smell of sulpher due to the geothermic activity, there is steam rising out of any crack in the ground and a big geyser which we hope to visit tomorrow. From Rototua, we did a day trip to Waitomo, home of the glow-worm caves (actually maggots, but doesnt sound as attractive to toursits!). Here we did black water rafting which is the best activity ever! It involves all sorts of challenges beginging with a 37 metre abseil into complete darkness, squeezing through a tiny gap in the rock. We were all dressed in wet suits, with gum boots and a helmet with a light on it to help us through the caves. When we all reached the bottom, we clambered over some rocks and followed a path round to a steep drop where one by one we were attached to a zipline and pushed into darkness, as they switched off all of our lights. It was quite scary because we were never told what was coming next so it was all a complete suprise. On the zipwire there were glowworms covering the ceiling of the cave. After a quick tea break (sitting in a cave drinking tea and eating flapjacks was quite strange!) we were given a tire inner tube and told to jump off, with a 4metre drop into water (which was 9 degrees!!). It felt like a huge drop and you were meant to land in your ring, but i didnt quite do that and lost my ring, had to swim over to find it. We then entered the main cave for glow worms and were told more about what they are and how they work. The next part of the journey involved walking, wading and swimming in the water over obstacles and through tiny holes we had to crawl through on our bellies. We saw quite a few eels in the water as we went. Our exit wasnt too easy either. We had to climb up two waterfalls, with the water gushing down in our faces. It was such an amazing experience, and we did it in a group with lots of people off our bus, it was really great fun. Back in Rotorua today I did more luging, 14 of us raced down on much longer and faster tracks than the one in Queenstown. Then this evening we visited a sacred Maori village. They were all dressed in traditional clothing, and greeted us as they would have greeted visitors to their village with the chief giving an offering to our leader (we elected Cez who had to stand still without laughing or cyring as they tried to intimidate them by running around with spears, screaming, making their eyes bulge and screaming in his face). We then enjoyed a performance of singing and dancing including the Haka before we sat down to a meal cooked by the traditional technique of burying the food underground and covering it in hot stones (called a hangi). It was a great evening, everybody had a great time and we learnt a lot more about the culture.