Mercury Bay - Rotorua

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Another early start today. Weather not so good.

Headed down to the Hot water beach to dig our own hot pool. Its quite impressive if you simply dig your feet a couple of inches into the sand it suddenly gets incredibly hot. Certain hot spots are even scolding. So, with shovel in hand we started digging our pools. The water was very hot (certain places you couldnt even stand.) and occasionally the sea water would wash up and enter the pool to give us some light relief. Managed to dig quite a large pool, but didnt have very long as the tide was coming up.

Went to the Karangahake Gorge which was cool and went down some old gold mines and walked the old railwayline. The sun had come out now and it was getting quite hot but the walk was relatively short and sweet with some shakey swing bridges which amused us.

By this point I had realised that our driver scottys Ipod only seemed to have gangsta rap on it and after a couple of hours of songs about gehettos, hoes and pimping I wanted to quite frankley pop a cap in his ass.

Stopped for lunch at Matamata otherwise known as hobbiton (the shire scenes were filmed here). Its was quite tacky and not very nice. Was going to take a photo of the golum statue but it had been vandilised.

Early afternoon we reached Rotorua. The town is built on top of some hot water or volcanic type caverns or something. Everywhere in town there were small hot springs poping up and the town park is covered with mud pools. In fact no one can insure their houses here as nobody can predict when the next hot spring is going to materialise from the ground (could be in your back yard). With all this volcanic activity the whole place smelled of eggy sulphur and I was amazed that people could live here (although you kind of get over the smell after a while).

Went louge riding, which was really good fun! Its essentially a low tricycle thing you sit in with small plastic chasey and race them down a down hill track (afterwards you take a ski lift to the top and start all over again). Took a while to get used to as you pick up a lot of speed and around the corners it tilts onto the chasey corner scrubing off alot of speed. Scotty our driver whos from the area and who has been doing it since he was a kid said hed buy the person who beats him a pint (challenge!!). First race he duly won and I managed to come second after a rubbish start but managed to close the gap near the end. Second race Scotty won again unfortuntally I couldnt pick up enough speed so came third. Final race on the start line we managed to force scotty to the back. Got going and I was battleing for the lead with two rather large blokes . Was about to grab first when I almost killed myself by trying to make a move and suddenly realising we had a chircain coming up (room only for one luge.) I dived back behind the leader and lost speed and went down to third. Scotty was now catching but suddenly at full speed we came across a slow moving mum and her two kids. We took evasive manuvers and dived for the gaps. Scottys gap was quickley closed off by a paniced mum and he was forced off the track and into the hedgerows and trees. In the end he had to buy 7 pints but havent seen any sign of these as yet.

Thst evening we went to Tamaki Maori Village. It was really good and Maori reinactment wasamazing and entertaining. We got lots of songs and dances and at the end the of course did the Haka. We then had an amazing all you can eat buffet dinner (went up 3 times). It had everything, lamb chicken seafood (never seen mussels so big).

After having stuffed ourselves we headed back singing songs and what not on the bus and went to the Lava bar outside our hostel. Good mix of locals and backpackers and had a lot to drink (but had little effect from all the food we ate.)

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Comments

[Devs]

friend
Some guy from my office is travelling around NZ at the moment. His name is Mark and he has reasonably long black/grey hair. Keep a look out for him.