New Zealand - North Island

---

Hi, we're in the North Island now and had a short flight into Wellington on Lisa's birthday on which she happily read her OK magazine Deaks and i had splashed out on as a present! We had a wander around the town and a lazy afternoon before getting ready to go out for some birthday drinks! We went to the Tasting Rooms first where we had arranged to meet Rachael Ineson who we used to work with at DLA and now lives back home in Wellington, it was really good to see her. Her cousin Brendan came out too and another couple and we hit several bars and managed to get a couple of free drinks for Lisa. Spent most of the night in Establishment dancing away until an Indian man doing an Irish jig trod on Deaks' toe which really hurt and bled loads! I whisked her off to the toilets to clean her up in the sink before hitting the dance floor again which had suddenly been invaded by loads of policeman and i tried to steal their hats!

We hadn't organised to do too much the next morning knowing we would have hangovers so went out at lunchtime on our half day Lord of the Rings tour. Our guide, Jason, was really nice and it turned out to be just the 3 of us on the tour which was actually quite good, so we all piled into his mini bus and set off up the hillside to the Lord of the Rings locations. We drove past Peter Jackson's (Director of LOTR) luxury home in Wellington and the massive peninsular which he owns and stopped at the first location where a few scenes of the film were shot. Jason had brought along some still shots of the scenes so we could see what he was refering to and we learnt quite a bit about how much effort and detail goes into filming each scene which we had no idea. For a lot of the locations they had to build minitures of the set, use big boats for most of the cast and smaller boats for the hobbits plus use dwarves and children as body doubles for them and they even had someone totally dedicated to making leaves for the trees they added to the set! For the noise of the army marching in the Two Towers, Peter Jackson went to the rugby stadium in Wellington and the 30,000 people there had to pound on their chests and make loads of noises and he even used a very odd noise his wife was making when she was full of cold one day for the evil noise of the ring wraithes!

We walked the paths where the delicious Orlando Bloom had walked and were hoping he might spring out from behind the trees with his bow and arrow and whisk us off but unfortunately not. He was apparently living next door to someone in Jason's family during filming but no one was bothered at the time because he wasn't famous!!!

We went to the cinema that night as Lisa was desperate to see "Sex in the City". Deaks couldn't bear to watch such "trash" so opted for Indiana Jones and i watched the film with Lisa which was really good and a bit of a tear jerker although i didn't cry quite as much as Lisa who nearly flooded the cinema it was a little embarrassing!!

We set off on our first north island Magic bus journey to Napier and were quite looking forward to seeing who our new driver was as we'd had some really cool funny drivers in the south but were thoroughly disappointed to find we had Rod who barely spoke a word to us and didn't even help us get our backpacks on and off the bus! We arrived in Napier, which was a designated overnight stop, in the rain and there was nothing to do it was really small so we wandered around town and spent the afternoon chilling infront of the fire in our hostel.

We set off the next morning for Taupo with rude Rod our driver and arrived in the rain again. Not alot to do there either unless you want to do a skydive which we'd already done so had a wander around and spent the afternoon infront of the tv watching back to back dvds with most of the other people in the hostel. Deaks and i really wanted to see the Lord of the Rings films again since our tour so we all watched the first 2 Lord of the Rings films. It felt strange not having anything to do or see for a couple of days but was a welcome chance to relax!

On to Rotorua next which absolutely stinks of egg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's a really volcanic area and the smell is the sulphur from the geo-thermal activity. The smell really gets to the back of your throat, you can't smell it too much when you're indoors but when you're walking around it takes a good couple of hours before you stop noticing it!

We went zorbing that afternoon which was really funny, the girls splashed out and had 3 goes and i just had the 1. We didn't realise quite how wet we were going to get and ended up looking like we'd entered a wet t-shirt competition! We were driven to the top of the hill and had to dive head first into a giant zorbing ball which was filled with - luckily - warm water and then went rolling zig zag down the hill spinning around in the water, you could control the ball for the first bit but then you suddenly got really disorientated and ended up flipping upside down in it, it was really funny! I stopped at the bottom and was chief photographer getting some good shots of the girls and took some for a few random people and got talking to the photographer doing the professional shots. I said to him that i didn't have any photos of me coming down the hill and couldn't afford to buy the ones he'd taken as i was a backpacker and needed to save my money for important things like alcohol (!) and managed to wangle a free CD out of him with all the photos he'd taken yay, a little harmless flirting always works a treat!

The next day we'd booked up to go white water rafting on the Kaitiaki river. Nige appeared at the hostel barefooted to pick us up, he was a very funny character and had long braided hair, was wearing shorts in the cold and had loads of tattoos, some of skeleton bones on his hands and he even had shoes tattooed on his feet instead of wearing them - very odd!

We met up with our other crew members who were an English couple and were all kitted out in wetsuits, booties, life jackets and hats. We were a bit nervous as we'd heard that white water rafting was the most dangerous sport you could do, there was a 7 metre waterfall to tackle on route and it didn't help when we all had to look to the river while Nige recited a Maouri prayer asking the river to protect us on our journey!! The water was absolutely freezing and Nige taught us how to use the oars and work together as a team to steer us through the river and over the waterfalls successfully as kayak man went along side us in case anyone fell out to make sure they were ok. We stopped for another Maouri prayer then set off down the river and over the first 2 smaller waterfalls which we managed to get through without too much trouble. We stopped just before the third waterfall which was 7 metres high and the water was flowing at 2 tonnes per second and was very loud! Nige briefed us again on how each of us had to get down into the boat tucking our feet under the seat infront, grabbing the ropes either side and putting our heads into our chest on his command and then what to do if we fell out and went underwater etc. We all looked at each other and just knew we were going to fall out of this raft it was really strange. We paddled up to the waterfall and all got into position when Nige shouted "get down" and it all happened so quickly... we went vertically down into the waterfall, the whole raft went underwater and flipped upside down with us still in our positions under water! The next thing i knew i was upside down still clinging on to the raft and had to let go and wait to surface which we all did eventually, coughing and spluttering from taking in loads of water! Kayak man was there shouting at the top of his voice "swim harder, swim harder" as the river tried to carry us down stream but he sounded so scary shouting at us that we paddled as hard as we could and managed to cling for dear life to the rocks at the waters edge! Nige didn't appear for a while as he'd actually got stuck behind the waterfall when the raft went under and had to find his way out! We all clambered back into the raft and had a celebratory photo that we all made it. The statistics are that 1 in 60 rafts flip and people fall out at that waterfall with the company we went with, it was pretty scary but pretty cool too. Kayak man and the photographer said they hadn't seen anything like it all year and it was pretty ugly and definitely gave them something to talk about!

We decided we needed a night out to celebrate surviving especially as we'd had loads of quiet nights in too but Rotorua is so small and was hardly buzzing so we went to the one and only bar that everyone heads to called Lava Bar and it did actually get full up by the end of night especially when the Kiwi Experience bus turned up and the place was heaving with scantily clad 18 year olds staggering around on the dance floor!

The next morning we went on a half day tour to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland to check out the volcanic eruptions. We went to some boiling mud pools first which looked inviting as it was freezing cold that day but were 100 degrees so not a good idea to jump into! We then moved on to the Lady Knox geyser which erupts regularly at 10.15 every day (with a little help from a man throwing some soap into it!) and it throws bubbly water up 20 metres into the air. We walked around the thermal sights which were really interesting colourful rocks and lakes which steam and bubble as they are heated by the magma left over from earlier eruptions and it absolutely stunk of egg again which wasn't too pleasant with our hangovers!

We got the Magic bus to Mount Monganui, another quiet town but a designated stop, and had a more cheerful friendly driver which was good. He drove us around town showing us the sights and said that it is absolutely dead here with about the same amount of people as Rotorua but over Christmas and New Year 150-200,000 people descend on it to celebrate as it's close to Auckland and is a really beautiful beach location with luxury apartments! Unfortunately no one was around while we were there as we discovered on a night out and found that we doubled the number of people in the bars! We stopped here for 2 nights and avoided the tv room on the second night as New Zealand won the rugby although a few drunken kiwis did let me know about it while i was cooking my dinner in the kitchen and they were coming in to get more beers!

Our last bus journey took us to Auckland. We stopped on route to go black water rafting and see the glow worms in the Waitomo Caves. Again we got another attractive wet suit outfit to pour ourselves into, some wellies and a mining hat with a light on it! We trekked to the cave entrance with our black tubes and started to feel claustrophobic as we had to bend down to get in. We all stopped and sat in the caves in the dark with our lights off while the 2 guides told us what to expect and they completely freaked us out by saying we were 100 metres below ground and would be going to 300 metres, they also said that there were eels in the water and spiders on the walls of the cave which jump and could end up in your face but not to panic and just to peel them off slowly - oh yeah right!!!! I thought i'd stay at the front with one of the guides and that would be the safest place with the girls behind me but we all had to turn around and sit in our black tubes, hook our feet onto the person infront and so i ended up going backwards at the front heading towards what sounded like a massive waterfall!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They were only teasing us and when we reached it we stood up and went over it separately but still had to fall backwards into it. Lisa got stuck at the back of everyone and Deaks and i were up the front clinging onto each other paddling in the freezing water as i tried to reassure her that when everyone was shouting they'd seen an eel they were only joking! It wasn't half as scary as they made it out to be, there was a really cool waterslide in the caves, we saw the glow worms on the top of the cave but we didnt see any creepy crawleys thankfully!

We got back onto our bus and the driver asked us if we wanted to see some naked rabbits, very intriguing so we all said yes and arrived at a Shearing Shed which was really random. They kept really fluffy Angora rabbits there and the lady gave a demonstration on shearing them which looked rather cruel as she grabbed his back paws and tied rope around them and then stretched him out and tied his paws with rope the other end but she assured us they had been approved and it wasn't harmful to the rabbits.

Finally we got to Auckland and bumped into Richard our very first Magic bus driver and Tiarnan an Irish boy from our bus on the south island. We had planned to go out that night but everyone said that Sunday nights were really quiet so we weren't expecting to have a great night and ended up having a brilliant one - always the way - we went to an Irish pub with the boys and seemed to make lots of random friends including an Arab with the biggest afro and we all became friends with for the night, one of his French friends and a guy from Greece who smelt of coconut! Didn't feel too clever the next morning so spent the day wandering around Auckland and had a quiet evening ready for our flight to South America the next day eeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkk can't wait!!!x

---