Meike and I walked over to the geothermal park in the city but we were both so tired from the night before that neither of us had the energy to really walk around so we ended up going for a coffee, ate some lunch and then waited for our stray bus to pick us up. We were happy to see a small bus pull up to pick us up. We hopped on and met a variety of interesting people haha. We got in to Taupo and went to the skydiving place to watch a video and anyone who wanted to skydive got to pick out music for their dvd's and everything. But, in the end they weren't able to skydive due to bad weather. There was too many clouds and it started to rain which is ... read more

We changed out clocks here last night. Since it's spring here and not fall we sprung ahead by an hour so now i'm 19 hours ahead of home, kinda weird! Anyways, we were up early to drive out to Wai-o-tapu which is 20 minutes drive from Rotorua and is a big geothermal park so lots of stinky geysers and all that kind of fun stuff. The lady knox geyser goes off at 10:15am everyday because the park puts surfactants in the geyser at that time which sets off the geyser, very smart. Bought out tickets and then drove over to the geyser. A park guide did a bit of a talk and then added the surfactant and set the geyser off. It was slow to go but it did shoot water up pretty high. Drove back ... read more

Ate some breakfast at Uncle Boy's place before heading off on the bus to Rotorua. Another rainy day although we got a few moments of just cloudy skies. We stopped on the way at the big kiwi. Basically it's just a giant kiwi fruit haha. Meike and I got dropped off at our hostel and checked in. We are staying at a small hostel called Funky green backpackers. It's really nice and homey. We lucked out and got our room for a few nights at the same cost as a bigger dorm room. Yeah us! We walked into town after dropping our stuff in the room and headed for the info centre. Had some lunch at a noodle place where we had to eat with chopsticks. I somehow managed! After that we headed to a piercing ... read more

Another rainy day was what we woke up to but we all hopped on the bus to drive to a tiny place called Waitomo. There is not much to the town but motels and hotels because this is where all the caves are. In the 1800's the caves were open to the public and now guides take people into the caves to see the famed glow worms and do some adventure caving. Our driver dropped us off in Waitomo and we had to sign a medical form. That's never a good sign haha. But I did it anyways. Meike and I had decided to do the Tumu Tumu black water rafting adventure. Our small group was taken by van to a building in the middle of no where basically to get geared up. For those of ... read more

Made some breakfast and was disappointed to see some clouds and rain. We had planned to go down to the beach. We ended up walking down to Manu bay to watch some of the surfers with a couple of other people. The van from the hostel then came and picked us up to take us into town. We sat a cafe and ate some cake and had a coffee before getting a few things for our dinner. The sun came back out so we got back to the hostel and sat in the hammocks again for a bit. There is a viewpoint they have here to walk to they call Inspiration point. You can see the ocean and a good view of the sunset so we walked there to see it but the clouds came back ... read more