Tauranga and Rotarua

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After my last blog we stumbled into a puzzle shop and spent three hours talking to a man named Steve who may now be one of my favourite people in the world. The casino was not as successful as I had anticipated. The first poker table we came across held a big blind of $8000 and I decided that it was not an ideal night for poker. Instead we spent 10 fun filled minutes losing $40 on roulette and blackjack.  Before that we'd been to the top of the skytower for some steak and cocktails which I would recommend. If anyone does dine in the revolving restaurant in futre, be sure to slap the waiter who called me a gypsey.

The next day we caught an early bus for a scenic drive to Tauranga and I got started on one of our three new puzzles from Steve.

On arriving we met Rachels friend Rachel who looked after us for a couple of days. After some breakfast we had a wander around the town and some puzzle time whislt we wiated for Rachel to finish work. That night was spent eating an impressive amount of Domino's pizza and hitting the pillow pretty early.

The folowing day Rachel took us for a walk up her much loved Mount Maungani which was fantastic and after some ice cream, glow golf and a visit to the golf club to see Rachels fiancé we joined their pub quiz team. It looked like Rachel and I weren't much use at a pub quiz but if there weren't so many New Zealand based questions they would have been begging us to come back next week.

I'm the morning we said goodbye to Rachel and Vaughan and in exchange Vaughan gave Rachel a cold (although she didn't have to keep kissing him).

We caught our bus to Rotarua and got stuck in to some White whater rafting. It was the first time either of us had done it and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. It is definately something we will do again. Afterwards we popped next door to walk around Hells Gate, a park full of all different kinds of steam and mud pools some of which demonstrating silly temparatures of around 150 degrees centigrade.

Today we hit the luge track. This is one of the best ideas anyone has ever had! It's basically a ski resort but given the lack of snow they have built three Tarmac tracks which you ride on a small board with wheels and handle bars. It was fast and there were jumps and it is simply awesome.

Rachel was starting to feel a bit worse at this point so we made use of the local geothermal activity and took a walk to the Polynesian spa.

I set about getting into my Speedo's with the missing 's' when Rachel advised me that the benifit of a deluxe private spa is that you don't need to wear clothes so we enjoyed a nice naked spa overlooking the lake.

After dinner and beer we're heading for an early night in a hope to make Rachel better before we head to Lake Taupo early in the morning.

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