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Published: April 16th 2007
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An early morning wake up call ensured that we would make our morning flight to Auckland. Whilst checking in, New Zealand and Australian bound travellers were bunched together and later split into two queues; one for Sydney and another for Aukland. I, being Miss socialite, started yabbering away to some poor people and as I was stating 'we're going to Augy', as my brain had somehow created a mixture of the two, Leez and I having been the only ones who had heard, burst out laughing.
When we reached Auckland I went for a walk around and brought a jumper, it being considerably colder here than in Fiji. I also had a really good conversation with Mum-bloody expensive but good all the same!
Only having three weeks to cover both North and South Island, we had to get moving and the next day we were in Rotorua and stayed in a really cosy place, 'Spa Lodge', which had a lovely Japanese manager, whose cheekiness Leez didn't get on with... I discovered this when Liza rocked up at reception to ask whether he could turn the heating on, only to be asked, 'Are you sure you're not just soft?' She seemed
pretty upset, so I took her off to the hot spa, where she soon heated up. This was one of the naturally heated pools in this famous geothermal hotspot.
In the morning, I don't know what came over me, but I went for a run and afterwards I felt fantastic! Then Leez and I found a cute little cafe and plopped, after we were interviewed by the local newspaper about 'How long we thought we would like to live for?' and we had our picture taken, which we found quite exciting!
We caught a shuttle bus to Hell's gate, which is an impressive geothermic park and mud spa, but wallowing did come at a price! After some reflection, we considered our trip had definitely been worthwhile- it even came complete with the smell of sulphur, which generally reminds people of eggs...
Anyway that evening when I was talking to Nick on the web, we soon came to realise that we would be meeting in Taupo, just south of where we were, within the next few days. This was where I had been planning to do a skydive and so had Nick! Liza was wanting to wait until Argentina where the
price would obviously be far less, but I wanted to do both!; Much to the dismay of my poor mother...
Zorbing was on the agenda for the next day and we had organised to go with a guy called Matt, who we had met through our hostel. It was such good fun, which caused me to be in hysterics all the way down. Basically you leap into an enormous inflated ball, superwoman style, with two of your friends and roll down a hill. You cannot imagine what it's like until you've done it, but we found it curiously fun! So we decided it had to be done again, but this time tried our luck at the zig-zag track... This didn't turn out to be quite so good, but it tired us out for our bus journey to Taupo that night. After all our fun and frolics, we found a fairly cosy hostel, complete with a fairly grumpy manageress. We soon realised that she was absolutely shattered and warmed to her given a little more time. Despite the place we'd stumbled across, we hadn't had so much luck with the weather, which was mucky, so we had a quiet night in
watching the film 'Unfaithful'. If anyone would like a review I'd be happy to slate it.
The following day was far warmer, so I ended up sitting in the sun, watching people finish a 100km charity walk with an Irish girl from our hostel. We couldn't help but find the state people were in, once they had finished, vaguely amusing. Talking to Nick that evening, I soon realised there was almost no way we would be able to meet up the next day in order to do a our much anticipated skydive. So instead I booked myself in with Leez to do the Tauranga crossing the next morning.
I was woken up at the ungodly hour of 5.30 as we had agreed, but being so early and not being that enthused about the whole thing, I decided that staying in bed was a much better plan. After some much needed sleep, I tried to get hold of Nick, as the weather had taken a turn for the better, but his phone wasn't working. It was then that I had to decide whether or not to do the skydive. As you might have guessed I DID and it was just amazing!
The freefall felt like 10 seconds, but it was closer to 45 and I really enjoyed the parachute to the ground, when my tandem partner twirled us around loads.
That evening, absolutely buzzing from the skydive, I simply couldn't sleep and woke up outrageously early. So in need of some way to get rid of all the adrenaline that still seemed to be circulating my system, I went for a walk along the lake which was stunning even though it was cloudy.
A few hours later, Leez and I caught our bus down to Wellington, where I've since been blogging like crazy, as it's seriously cold down here!
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