New Zealand part 1

---

It has been a while since my last entry but that is becasue I have been s busy I have hardly had a chance. Anyway I started by heading north out of auckland and up to bay of islands. I did a really cool canoe trip up there around the islands. We stopped in a shallow part and jumped out and picked a bunch of pippis (small mussels) out of the sand before canoeing to one of the islands and steaming them up right there. So tasty. I only spent the one day up there before coming back to Auckland and onto hot water beach. We had a really small bus of people, only eleven of us in a 54 seater bus, but it was a fun group. On hot water beach the name says it all really. At a certain point you only had to dig down about a foot to find boiling hot water. We had mixed it with the sea water and were all lying in the pool with a beer in our trunks at 9 at night. Next was one of the coolest things I have done, Caving in waitomo. We did a 5 hour cave adventure that involved an absail, zip line, climbing waterfalls, floating through glow worm cave and cave exploring. It was such good fun. At the next stop our bus kind of disintegrated as a number of people juist had north island passes so I spent an extra night in rotorua to join up with the bus behind. I knew a few of these people from the bay of islands so it was easy to get involved. In rotorua I did luging, which is bascially using a small go kart on a down hill track (surprisingly good fun!), went to a geyser park and to a mauri culture evening. The culture evening was so good. We got a see a mauri village, try the hacka and a few other games/dances before watching a show amd having a hangi (a feast cooked in the ground). The feast was delicous and there was so much food. I actually ate so much that had to throw up when I got back to the hostel. It was worht it though. I also did a morning trip to hobbiton (the shire). It is a little pricey but really cool. The entire set is still there and we got a 2 hour tour around it visiting bagend, Sam's house, where gandalf sets of his fireworks and all sorts. The set is so detailed that I had to ask if some of the spider webs were real or not. They have fake lichen, moss tress that look so real. Anyway, with my new bus we moved on to taupo where there was a really cool hot spring river/stream and I spent about two hours sitting in the stream under the little waterfalls. Unfortunately because of the bad weather I was not able to do the treck that goes over mount doom. Absolutely gutted. From there we went to river valley where unforunately we could not white wate raft because of the weather but it is a really cool lodge set up in the middle of nowhere. We had an ace night there playingt a bunch of games. Unfortunately most of them involved flexibility so I did not do partictuarly well. The last stop in the north island was wellington and we actually spent 4 nights here because everybody wanted a night out and a break from packing up every day. The first nigth I went to see promethius at the cinema which was pretty cool movie. The second day a big group of us went to the botanic gardens in the gondola which gave a really nice view of wellington then in the evening we dit a charity shop challenge night out which resulted in me going out dressed as a nurse. Probably enough said on that. I aslo went to the te papa museum which is a massive musuem that is free. I spent 5 hours there easily. There is so much to see and loads of interactive stuff. I went with a gril called steph who is actually about to start medicine in Edinburgh but in second year as a post grad. I aslo did a full day lord of the rings tour where I visited a bunch of locations from the film. Isengard, rivendell, the hobbiton woods and a heap more. We got dressed up at a number of points as well and got some cool photos. This is basically the first half of my trip in New Zealand. I will post about the second half soon!

---