Rrrrrrotorrrrua

(first things first, I am going to try and fix the broken links to flickr - so you can see the other photos - keep a look out)

Anyway, here we are in seismically challenged, eggy whiffy Rotorua. (ok so there is no pic yet but there will be - you can try and imagine the smell though)

We arrived today and we ae staying at Joanne McMillan's (Katie's best buddie from Carradale) Auntie Eileen's house (well, if i get the coffee/tea order wrong again we may well be booted out!!! ;o) who very kindly has offered to take us in for a few days and show us around.

We left Wellington a few days ago in our nice new FREE rental car - a Ford Falcon MR6sport which we will also post pics of. Basically it would have cost $100 in total to get the bus from Welly to Rotorua but this way we had our freedom to roam and it only cost us $80 in fuel.

Our first stop from Welly was Lake Taupo where we spent the night in Tiki Lodge which was great apart from the worst snorer we have encountered on this entire trip -or maybe we have been away from 6 bed share dorms for a while - we moved rooms the next day into a nice family room with a private kitchen which we got at a reduced rate from the really nice owners there which was brill. In and around Taupo there is a lot to do but the only mad adventure thing we did was go on a jet boat on the waikato river which was a pretty good way to spend an afternoon - pics to follow.

Our next stop was Waitomo (further North and West towards Auckland) where we stayed in Kiwi Paka youth hostel - it used to be a YHA bt we think it has let its standards slip and lost its affiliation - it wasn"t that nice and Katie was appalled by the cockroach in the kitchen. Even the nice view of some horses nearby couldn't make up for that.

Whilst in Waitomo there is only one thing to do really and that is to go into the caves and see some glow worms - if you don't know about glow worms well they are basically just the larvae of a type of Gnat who give off a green glow from their faeces and eat flies and other insects attraced by the glow - they also eat each other and also their parents. So, as our tour guide in the cave put it they are "cannabilistic cave dwelling larvae with shiny poo." ;o)

The tour we chose combined some caving (crawling about in caves) with abseiling (dangling about in caves and screaming) which was really really good fun actually. Some of the abseiling was quite a long way and some of it was down through waterfalls which was refreshing to say the least. I think we would both highly recommend this trip and if my brother is up for it then we might go back when he makes it over to NZ.

And, as I move seamlessly back to the start of this post, we drove to Rotorua this morning in the heaviest rain we have seen since arriving in NZ - by the time we got here though it had dried up. Rotorua is bigger than we expected and pretty impressive apart from the eggy sulphur odour from the thermal pools that are everywhere. Aunt Eileen took us on a quick tour today and showed us tons of stuff including free, just by the side of the road bubbling pools of mud - apparently in 2003 there was a big explosion of mud that covered this large public area and destroyed a lot of trees and the surrounding area. Pretty scary as it could happen again at any time. We also went for a walk around the big redwood forest which was really nice. Tomorrow we ae heading off to some thermal pools (polynesian pools if you want to google it) and then we are off out to a proper Maori evening of entertainment just down the road - will tell you all about it in the next post.

Ok, I'm pretty tired now so I am off to sleep - hope everyone back home has a jumper on as I am hearing that it is pretty cold.

All the best,

SB