Summer Holidays!

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January 2nd 2009

Published: February 7th 2009

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Annalise 13

Rainbow Lodge

Spending Christmas and New Years in the southern hemisphere is pretty fun. Hot summer days spent lounging on the beach with the sun setting around 9pm makes a pretty good atmostphere for holiday festivites. I spent my christmas at Lake Taupo in Rainbow Lodge. This funky hostel put on a three day party filled with activites, food and booze. We had a giant christmas feast followed with delicious desert and then once the food settled we played a giant soccer match with another hostel. The only rule was that everyone must have a can of beer in their hands at all times. The penalty for breaking this rule was a shot of jagermeister! It was pretty wild, people going all out with beer exploding everywhere! Later that day I lounged down at the lake and even got a little sunburnt. Imagine that, getting a sunburn on christmas day. Ha! I love it! Somehow between the brief lull in the hostel activites, Nina and I rented some mountain bikes and cruised around the nearby trails. We visited the nearby bungy jump, Huka Falls, and Craters of the Moon.

After Lake Taupo I went to Napier and stayed with Nikki, a girl

Christmas Dinner

Wine and presents included!!

I met in Belgium. We had kept in contact and she invited me to come stay with her family at their beach house. I spent two days relaxing on the beach and having delicious dinners with her siblings. It was fun walking around the little town they lived in watching all the trackers roll by pulling the boats. Common sense would suggest that this was just an additional task for the trackers, but after asking I found out the sole purpose of the tracks was to transport the boats. They're not used for farming at all! I loved it!

From Napier I went to Wellington where I rang in the New Year. To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the celebration. Wellington, the capital of NZ, didn't even have any fireworks at midnight. Strange. But I did have fun walking around town that night, listening to the live band in the central square and going to a few bars with some other backpackers. I also spent a few days sightseeing, going to Te Papa, the amazingly big and free museum, the botanic gardens and famous trolley, touring the government buildings and hiking one of the mountians overlooking